Here are some common versioning conventions used when developing software.

Versioning Structure

Versioning software is just a simple way of keeping track of changes made to that software. An example of a version number would be: 1.0.3.12

Or in words: Major.Minor.VMinor.Build

Major – When you do major changes that are no longer compatible with older (or newer) versions of your software then this number should be increased.

Minor – When a new feature is added this increases

Revision – When bugs are fixed this increases

Build – Increases each time the software is compiled

This will help you and your users keep track of different editions of your code and keep track of your compiled editions of code.

There are many other ways of organizing the numbers and some people even use hex numbering systems! It is just a case of working out what you want to include in the version numbers, but I hope you can see what I am trying to show by how the numbers are split up.

Alpha & Beta

Alpha is often added to software to show that it is in a very early testing stage and often only released internally to people like software testers, staff, friends, etc.

Beta then replaces Alpha after numerous bugs have been fixed during the Alpha stage. However it still needs more testing and so Beta is added.

Once it is out of the beta stages then it’s a case of only using the version numbering system. The reason alpha and beta words are used is just to indicate to users that it is still very buggy software and is currently being worked on to fix them.

Only using major and minor

Some software vendors you may notice only ever release software such as 6.2 or just 6 (visual basic 6 for example). While they will very likely have a much more in detail version number such as: 6.2.57.35.46.448.73.433.3423 or something similar to that! Rather than show its users that long number then just show you the first 2… such as 6.2. This is mainly for the visual appearance only.

Strange Letters or Words

Some software vendors release versions of software as names! More often than not their just code names so instead of saying for example, “Have you checked out version 5?”, you could say, “Have you checked out Verbone?”. An example of such a versioning system is windows where Microsoft have release windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows Vista, etc… and then each one has its own individual long version numbers. Some people may argue this and say that they are different products though using the scheme above since they break compatibility they would simply be incremented Major numbers. Again it is really for you to decide how you would like to treat these.