Versions and releases

MDC's version numbers strictly follow semantic versioning v2.0.0: MAJOR.minor.patch. In short, if the current version is 1.1.1, then:

• A major release has a version number of 2.0.0.
• A minor release has a version number of 1.2.0.
• A patch release has a version number of 1.1.2.

These are engineering version numbers, intended for communicating to our engineering clients what type of follow-up work a upgrading to a release might entail. Since every breaking change bumps the major version number, we‘ll quickly run up to “large” major versions. That’s ok.

Major releases can contain breaking changes to clients, while minor and patch releases cannot.

How do we determine which numbers need to change?

We follow the guidelines defined by the semver v2.0.0 specification.

Our public API includes the following:

• APIs that are present in non-private headers. A private header is one that is contained within a sub-directory named private/ within a src/ directory.

We define “backwards incompatible changes” to include the following:

• Any change that will result in a build breakage from the previous release.

What is the source of truth for MDC's version number?

The VERSION file contains the current version as a simple string (and nothing else). Our scripts/release/bump script updates that number and copies it into all the locations that it needs to end up, e.g. CocoaPods podspecs, etc. You can use the scripts/print_version script to print out the version number of the library.