Research release strategies and make a descision on which standard we're going to use

[cyrildewit]

Description

Deployments are done using released version of the application. We need a release stategy protocol for how developers can release new software. Release notes for example need to be written and a new version must be released according to the release schema.

[cyrildewit]

Research

Versioning schemas

SemVer

Semantic Versioning has been created by Tom Preston-Werner and is a versioning scheme that's constructd of three parts: major, minor and patch.

1. MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes
2. MINOR version when you add functionality in a backward compatible manner
3. PATCH version when you make backward compatible bug fixes

See official specification at: https://semver.org/

Use cases for SemVer

SemVer is ideal for libraries and frameworks where API compatibility is crucial. If you take a look at various package managers, you will see that SemVer is usually the standard.

• NPM (https://docs.npmjs.com/about-semantic-versioning)
• Packagist
• Nuget (https://blog.inedo.com/nuget/package-versioning/)

CalVer

Calendar Versioning, abbreviated as CalVer, introduces a standard terminology to leverage dates in versions. Popular projects that uses this versioning scheme are Ubuntu, PyCharm, pip, Unity, Microsoft Windows and Spring Cloud.

Characteristics of CalVer:

1. CalVer leverages natural understanding
2. "People are calendar-oriented. Practically, it's just easier to remember that a library was causing a live issue back in 2013 than it is to remember that up until version 1.6.18 that library had a lot of bugs."
3. CalVer has better semantics
4. "Semantic" Versioning is all relative. One developer's 1.0.0 is another's 0.0.1alpha. As authors, we try to ignore this and write others off as wrong.

When to use CalVer

1. Does your project feature a large or constantly-changing scope?
2. Is your project time-sensitive in any way? Do other external changes drive new project releases?

Downsides

Jacob Tomlinson (NVIDIA), wrote:

"By releasing software that uses SemVer you are signaling to your community that you have some constraints. In my opinion, CalVer signals to your community that anything could happen at any time and that you have no interest in the effect that has on your users."

Resources

1. https://calver.org/#scheme
2. https://sedimental.org/designing_a_version.html
3. https://jacobtomlinson.dev/posts/2023/sometimes-i-regret-using-calver/
4. https://nexb.com/software-versioning

[cyrildewit]

Conclusion

The backen application is of type "project" and is not used as a dependency in other projects/libaries. Major changes are possibly made on weekly basis. When we are going to release this software using SemVer, it's important that we adhere to the specification. Assessing if a new release breaks will be another time expensive step in the release procedure. Breaking changes to the application are usually done backwards compatible. Breaking changes to the database for example can be fixed with a one time migration. The overhead that comes with SemVer for a web application that's not installed on users computers, will lead to more friction and time-expensive assessments without much gain.

CalVer will allow us to quickly release new versions on a daily basis.