Timeline for When and where was the ‘dotted sequence of integers’ version numbering scheme invented?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 14, 2022 at 14:03 | answer | added | the busybee | timeline score: 3 | |
| Aug 11, 2022 at 18:37 | comment | added | Wayne Conrad | Semantic versioning (semver.org) for APIs and libraries bumps the major number for breaking changes to the API, the minor number for non-breaking API changes, and the patch number for bug fixes. Sadly, there's no equivalent standard that I know of for applications. | |
| Aug 11, 2022 at 5:03 | comment | added | cup | There was a time when manufacturers preferred to keep the major revision number small to show that the product was stable. Nowadays changing the major revision shows progress and new features and nobody bothers how high any of the numbers go. | |
| Aug 10, 2022 at 18:58 | answer | added | Leo B. | timeline score: 2 | |
| Aug 10, 2022 at 17:06 | answer | added | HackSlash | timeline score: 6 | |
| Jun 3, 2021 at 11:01 | history | undeleted | user3840170 | ||
| Jun 3, 2021 at 10:59 | history | deleted | user3840170 | via Vote | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 19:36 | comment | added | Frog | @user3840170 I don’t know about revision control, but the numbering scheme was common for chapter/paragraph/sentence identification; it would be a small logical step to apply the same principle to software and indeed hardware versions. | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 14:19 | comment | added | Solomon Slow | At one rather large company where I worked, they told me; When the third number gets bumped, that's a bug fix that is pushed out to all customers on record, when the second number gets bumped, that's a UI/performance/feature enhancement that gets pushed out to customers who pay for support, and when the first number gets bumped, that is considered to be a new product. | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 13:11 | comment | added | dave | At the same time, ICT in the UK were using a similar scheme, at least for the GEORGE 3 operating system, though since American had not yet been adopted as the language of computing, they were "marks" rather than "versions" - as in GEORGE 3 Mark 8.67. | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 13:04 | comment | added | dave | I think we're just going to have to play "who can find the oldest document". Certainly DEC was using this form in the early 1960s (TOPS-10 release history), though it was somewhat product-dependent; forms like "V6B" rather than "V6.1" were also used until the late 1970s. | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 11:44 | comment | added | user3840170 | @Frog Was it ever used for printed document versioning? I find it rather improbable that printed document versioning was sufficiently complex that it required numbering major and minor revisions separately. | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 11:00 | comment | added | Frog | This numbering scheme was used in printed documents long before is was applied to software versions, so I think that the question may be ill-formed, perhaps it should ask when the dot notation originated or when it was first applied to software versions. | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 7:15 | comment | added | texdr.aft | @cup LISP 1.5 was nearly identical to LISP 1, but LISP 2 was very, very different from LISP 1.5 (and thus LISP 1). | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 7:01 | comment | added | cup | LISP possibly had 1.5 because it wasn't quite 2 but it was different enough from 1. I am wondering if this form of numbering appeared after SCCS was released (1977) . SCCS used 1.1, 1.2 numbering for the files. | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 4:48 | history | edited | user3840170 | CC BY-SA 4.0 | added 16 characters in body; edited title |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 4:19 | comment | added | texdr.aft | It appears that Emacs has had this sort of numbering system since the mid-1980s. Also TeX82 used a conventional style until version 3. | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 3:49 | comment | added | user3840170 | Maybe? Though I’d also welcome a more ‘classical’ example where the first release was numbered 1.0 and the next one 1.1 or 2.0 | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 3:32 | comment | added | texdr.aft | Does LISP 1.5 count? It came after LISP 1 and before LISP 2 (which never really took off). | |
| Jun 2, 2021 at 3:24 | history | asked | user3840170 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |