Version Guidelines?

[SaintClare]

What are the guidelines for naming versions of mods (Version 1.0, 1.5, 2.1, etc.), and what are Alpha and Beta mods?

[blove]

There are no guidelines. Alpha is something that is roughed in and marginally playable. Beta still needs work but is playable.

[Starke]

Usually, alphas will be in the low decimal range or unnumbered. (I've never seen an alpha version controlled above 0.34a) Betas will be decimals before 1, so 0.5 or 0.67 would be beta version numbers. It's fairly common practice in some circles to denote alphas and betas with an a or b at the end of the version number, to indicate it's status.

 

 

After that, it's a lot more flexible in what you're doing. The primary release of a finished piece of code is almost always going to be 1.0.

 

Usually the value after the decimal indicates iterative changes from the previous version. So, 1.1 to 1.2 would be fairly minor. For extremely minor fixes, sometimes an additional number will be added, like 1.2.1 or 1.21, to indicate a minor bug that was fixed on it's own.

 

Usually, an entire number upgrade, IE version 2.0, or version 3.0, indicates a massive change to the mod. Extensive new functionality, or a serious change in the way the software behaves. In rare cases you will see situations where the value after the decimal gets past 1.9, at that point, it can either become a 1.10 (with hotfixes denoted by 1.10.1), or it can be jumped to 2.0, depending on the preferences of the coder(s) involved.

 

That said, there's no real enforcement of this. There's no real guidelines, as Blove said, there's just habitual behavior.

Edited August 6, 2013 by Starke