Simplifying our product versioning
by Olivier Ramonat –
Looking at the list of product versions that were expected for 2017 it became clear that we had to review the way we were handling product versioning. Was it so useful to have all these different versions: 1.9.0, 4.9.0, 2.11.0, 2.4.0, 7.5.0, 3.9.0, 17.0.0, 6.3.0, 1.7.0, 3.4.0, 1.4.0, 1.5.0, 3.2.0, 1.2.0, 1.9, 2.13.0, and 2.2.0? Was it worth the cost? Did we really know which product had its version bumped to 3.9.0?
AdaCore products are released on a time based cycle, with the preview release in October, a major release in February, and a corrective version in July. One sensible solution is to choose a date versioning scheme using the year for the major version number, then the minor version for our release increment, and no micro version.
Starting with the 17.0 preview release all AdaCore products will have a unified version number.
By the way, can you guess what products all these version numbers above refer to?
About Olivier Ramonat
Olivier Ramonat has a Telecommunications engineering degree from ENST Bretagne, which he received in 2003. His first job was at Electricité De France where he worked in a R&D team. He joined AdaCore in 2008. After being involved in quality assurance and production infrastructure, he is now IT Director.