Examples

Introduction

To finish off our explaination of using GitFlow with GitHub, we’ve got some examples of different builds of software.

Questions

In the following examples, can you say …

• what the version number change means?
• if the change breaks backwards-compatibility or not?
• which branch or branches the build may have come from?
• which kinds of environments the build can be installed into?

Here are the example version numbers:

1. foobar-1.0.0-SNAPSHOT20120512
2. foobar-1.0.0-SNAPSHOT20120512
3. foobar-1.0.0 -> foobar-1.0.1
4. foobar-1.0.1 -> foobar-1.0.2-rc1
5. foobar-1.0.2 -> foobar-1.1.0-rc1
6. foobar-1.2.0 -> foobar-2.0.0

Answers

foobar-1.0.0-SNAPSHOT20120512:

• This is a development snapshot
• It might break backwards compatibility
• It will have been built from a feature branch, or from the develop branch
• It can be installed on dev boxes and integration environments.

foobar-1.0.0 -> foobar-1.0.1:

• This is a bugfix release
• It does not break backwards compatibility
• It will have been built from the master branch
• It can be installed everywhere

foobar-1.0.1 -> foobar-1.0.2-rc1:

• This is a bugfix release candidate
• It does not break backwards compatibility
• It will have been built from the hotfix branch called hotfix/1.0.1
• It can be installed everywhere except production

foobar-1.0.2 -> foobar-1.1.0-rc1:

• This is a release candidate for a minor release
• It does not break backwards compatibility
• It will contain new features
• It may also contain bugfixes
• It will have been built from the release branch called release/1.1.0
• It can be installed everywhere except production

foobar-1.2.0 -> foobar-2.0.0:

• This is a major new release
• It may break backwards compatibility
• It will have been built from the master branch
• It can be installed everywhere