2020-07-31-Poover

poover

there are a lot of versioning schemes out there, apparently:

semver

samver

ChronVer

calver

TeXver (or whatever you want to call the Knuth scheme)

FibVer

ZeroVer

If you think all thesever are badver, maybe you should try poover. It's the Best Possible Versioning System (TM). Why?

it reflects the reality of software development more accurately than competing version schemes

versions are easy to remember and pronounce. Try saying that about '201909031732-aa314da'!

you don't have to worry about the kinds of changes you're making -- do they break the ABI? the API? the URL? who knows!? it doesn't matter.

how it works

using poover is simple. the first release of your software is tagged "poo". each successive release of your software adds a letter to the end:

an "o" if you feel good about the release

a "p" if you don't think it's a good idea

So simple. it's easy to see what version you should increment to by looking at the version you're on. And you can easily see the quality of the software by how many "o"s and "p"s there are! Your Other Versioning Scheme Can't Do That!!!

It's also easy to decide about upgrades: if the last digit is 'o', the upgrade will go smoothly. If it's 'p', wait a little while.

F.A.Q.

what if I really hate the release?

There is *one* more reserved string in poover to if the quality is truly bad: "pee". If you want to signal to your users that they should just burn the whole shop down, abandon your software, and contract Google or someone, just include the string "pee" in the version and everyone will easily be able to tell.