semantic versioning
termprogrammingops culture
The MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH convention, where each number carries a promise about compatibility.
Under SemVer, PATCH means backward-compatible fixes, MINOR means backward-compatible additions, and MAJOR means you broke something and callers must read the notes. Its value is entirely social: it lets a dependency manager reason about upgrades automatically, which only works while publishers keep the promise. Version 0.y.z is the explicit escape hatch meaning nothing is stable yet.
Also known as: SemVer, versioning, version number