There are several schemes of versioning. I catagorized them into six though the names I use aren't the originals.
- Single version scheme
- Double version scheme
- Triple version scheme and
- Quadraple version scheme
- Year version scheme
- Character-Number version scheme
Single version scheme
It just get's incremented by a single digit and the version is in the format
For example, take flash player. It's versions are 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and the recent 11. Even Java has this. Java 5, Java 6 and recent Java 7.
Double version scheme
It contains two stages in the version string.
This is used to show also revisions of the software containing bugfixes. Example: Windows OS itself. Windows XP has 6.0 Windows Vista has 6.1 and Windows 7 has 6.2.
Triple version scheme
It contains three stages in the version string.
Linux kernel, Apple OS X, the popular NSIS install system, uses this versioning number.
Quadraple version scheme
It contains four stages.
<major>.<minor>.<release>.<build> |
This is the default version for executables used by windows. Though, the software uses it's own versioning, this is the format present in the Properties dialog of the windows executables.
Year version scheme
Some softwares which are released once an year can have the year number as the version. For example, MS Office 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013 and the popular system utils like TuneUP Utilities.
Character-Revision version scheme
Some softwares such as photoshop uses a custom implementation like
where CS denotes major and 3 denotes the revision number.