I'm currently writing a small desktop application for a friend, but I'm doing it primarily as a learning experience for myself. In the spirit of getting educated and doing things The Right Way, I want to have version numbers for this app.
My research brought up these related results
- What "version naming convention" do you use?
- How do you version your files (Version Numbers)
- Forked a project, where do my version numbers start?
but none of them address numbering of alphas, betas, release candidates, &c. What are the conventions for version numbers below 1.0? I know they can go on for some time; for example, PuTTY has been around for at least a decade and is still only at version beta 0.60.
Best Answer
It really depends on the project; some projects don't even release a version 1.0.
One popular method of numbering versions (that I've started to use) is Semantic Versioning.
Some quotes to give you more ideas on how it works and/or answer some of your questions:
There are also rules on how to specify "alpha," "beta," etc. releases. Check out the details at http://semver.org/.
[Edit] Another interesting version numbering scheme is the one MongoDB uses: