Web App Version Numbers

Application version numbers usually go like this:

(major version).(minor version).(sub-minor version)...

So for example you start out with 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, moving slowly to the first stable release 1.0, which gets downloaded by a lot of people and therefore also several important bugs are found, so you do a some quick bugfix releases 1.0.1, 1.0.2. But you are also working on some additional features and soon release them as 1.1, 1.2 and so on. Finally you reach to the point where the app needs serious architectural changes, which you release as 2.0.

The version number is usually a good hint for the user. Most importantly it tells him how big changes to expect from a particular version compared to some other version. For example when you are using GreatApp 2.5.3 and you hear that 2.5.6 came out, then you are probably not panicking: I’m three version behind! But when you hear that 3.0 came out, then you are ceartanly expecting to find a lot of new cool features.

But with web apps, the user is always using the latest version. This is a great thing, because all your important bugfixes will reach to each user as soon as you deploy a new release. But because the latest version is always in use by all users, the changes between versions must be as gradual as possible, or you will risk driving your users mad with your constantly changing app.

So, from the users perspective, web app version numbers are useless, because they are always using the latest version – using anything else is not even an option. But from the development perspective, version numbers still help.

In my company we have so far followed a practice of “new release – new version”, that is, each time you do a release you increment the version number by one. There are two things to emphasize here:

So far this system seems to have worked quite well. Well, at least for a web app...

Kirjutatud 9. septembril 2009.

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