SemVer
‘Semantic Versioning’ or SemVer is a specific ruleset for versioning the software libraries that you author. As you can gather from the name, the intent is to make every version change semantically meaningful, so that those who use your library can easily understand the impact a version change might have on them.
SemVer has been gaining wide traction, especially in the Node.js community, and builds upon lessons learned from a long history of software version management with tools such as Maven.
SemVer has a public specification, authored by Tom Preston-Werner, co-founder of GitHub. The spec is a very worthwhile read, but a short summary is provided here for convenience:
- MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes
- MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards-compatible manner
- PATCH version when you make backwards-compatible bug fixes
SemVer is valuable for a couple of significant reasons.
First is that the predictability makes it clear to everyone what to expect when the library version changes.
Second, package.json provides a number of version specifier flags
that allow libraries to dynamically import dependencies according to SemVer rules, such as ‘latest patch that doesn’t change backwards compatibility’.
When you’re working on a project, think carefully about the implications of changes you are making and plan for release version changes as appropriate. Also make sure you perform a release whenever you update a version, so the contents of the software do not change for that version.