Semver

It's kinda weird to just name tags any old thing. We're developers, we like structure, sameness, and sometimes even bike-shedding.

"Semver", or "Semantic Versioning", is a naming convention for versioning software. You've probably seen it around, it looks like this:

It has two primary purposes:

1. To give us a standard convention for versioning software
2. To help us understand the impact of a version change and if it's safe (how hard it will be) to upgrade to

Each part is a number that starts at 0 and increments upward forever. The rules are simple:

• MAJOR increments when we make "breaking" changes (this is typically a big release, for example, Python 2 -> Python 3)
• MINOR increments when we add new features in a backward-compatible manner
• PATCH increments when we make backward-compatible bug fixes

To sort them from highest to lowest, you first compare the major versions, then the minor versions, and finally the patch versions. For example, a major version of 2 is always greater than a major version of 1, regardless of the minor and patch versions.

As a special case, major version 0 is typically considered to be pre-release software and thus the rules are more relaxed.