Version numbering

C-Dogs SDL uses four numbers separated by periods, with trailing zeros omitted. Conform to Semantic Versioning where possible.

<zero>.<major>.<minor>.<patch>

Zero

Not sure when this will ever change to 1. An alternative is to drop the zero and shift all numbers up.

Major

• Backwards-incompatible features
• Major changes in gameplay

Minor

• Backwards-compatible features
• Minor changes in gameplay
• Changes in non-gameplay aspects

Patch

• Backwards-compatible bug fixes
• Changes in non-gameplay aspects that are rarely used, or affect small portion of users

Issues

There's a lot of gray area in what constitutes a major/minor/patch, plus other issues not covered. Here's a list:

• Don't skip numbers
• Numbers don't flow over or have an upper limit; e.g. 0.11.93 is perfectly valid, and is before 0.12 and after 0.2
• Don't "version match" some other product
• For ports, if there are zero changes to the existing packages, no new version is necessary. In practice this is very rare; ports usually entail at least trivial changes to common code, so the patch number should be incremented.
• The significance of features should be judged from the perspective of users, not developers.
• What about major, backwards-incompatible changes to non-gameplay features? E.g. breaking the config, breaking file formats, completely new menu system. Technically these warrant a major version increment, but these changes should be avoided, and made backwards-compatible where possible. Try to avoid unless absolutely necessary.
• Only increment one number per release. E.g. do not go from 0.5 to 0.6.1.