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The intention of the semver strings found in the package.json file are to indicate the currently acceptable version(s) of the package(s) a developer is depending upon in their project, today and in the future.

The absolute best place to find a grouping of semver numbers in the wild is in a package.json or bower.json file. So for now, semantic versioning or 'semver' is what we have, and it's assumed and used all over the place, even outside of NPM and Bower land. In all seriousness, this unenforceable agreement of semantical convention between package author and developer seems to work.

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When semver is understood by developers and respected by package authors, a tranquil harmony abounds among software engineers over the avoidance of dependency hell. || 1.2.5', or may be simpler to think about it as a range such as anything equal to or between '1.2.3 - 1.2.5').

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Or, maybe more so, which version ranges you'll most likely always want to immediately upgrade too (e.g. That is, from now on when you read a package's semver you should understand what is semantically being expressed so you can make sane decisions about upgrading the package. Hopefully, after that great pizza illustration, the meaning a semver encapsulates is nothing mystical. pepperoni() method it should be published as 1.0.0. When the author goes vegetarian and eliminates the. pepperoni() and the bug gets fixed it should get pushed as 0.1.1. When an issue on GitHub is opened about a bug in. pepperoni() it should get incremented to 0.1.0. When the author of the module decides to add some new functions like. Suppose a new module called pizza gets published to npm as version 0.0.1.

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Patch = 'bugfix' - Increment PATCH version when you have fixed a problem, but not broken or changed anything else.īelow is an example from of how you might interpret the version changes in a package based on the above definitions. Minor = 'new feature' - Increment MINOR version when you have added a feature, but the module is backwards compatible.

Major = 'breaking changes' - Increment MAJOR version when you have removed or changed a feature, and dependent modules will have to modified to be compatible with the new version. If the description for semver versioning just given, which is almost verbatom from the spec, contains too much spec-like-words, you might find the explanation and example from (shown below) to be more human friendly. The third number is called the PATCH number and only changes when you make backwards-compatible bug fixes. The second number is called the MINOR number and only changes when you add functionality in a backwards-compatible manner. The first number (from left to right) is called the MAJOR number and only changes when you make incompatible API changes. An example of a semver would be: Version 1.0.0 Tom recommends that a version number consists of three digits separated by a period. Let's examine what, exactly, this entails. a package with an API) should convey a very specific semantical meaning to developers who use the package in a bigger system.

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In short, Tom thinks the decision to update a dependency (i.e. In order to avoid this hellish place, Tom offers 11 rules that dictate what constitutes a version number and the semantical meaning associated with numeric change among the version numbers. Tom, the author, describes this 'dependency hell' phenomenon as:ĭependency hell is where you are when version lock and/or version promiscuity prevents you from easily and safely moving your project forward. What is semver?Īccording to author of the semver spec, and succinctly put, the purpose of semver is to avoid 'dependency hell'. So, before I get to the meat of this article, which is really about all of those mystical and magical characters parsed by the node semver parser, I'm going to quickly review the purpose and semantics of semver versioning. I'm not going to assume that the semver spec is crystal clear to everyone. When you see the term 'semver' you can take this to mean that a version number is required and it should follow the semantical prescriptions detailed in the Semantic Versioning 2.0.0 specification from Tom Preston-Werner.

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With a firm grasp on the purpose and usage of npm and Bower, it should be no surprise that 'semver' is mentioned in the documentation describing how to add a properly versioned package to a repository. If you're unfamiliar with the purpose of a package manager and specifically the aforementioned package managers, it might be wise to stop now and read an article I wrote called, ' Package Managers: An Introductory Guide For The Uninitiated Front-End Developer'. source to build) and delivery of the open source Kendo UI Core code. As an example npm and Bower are used in the construction (i.e. Telerik makes use of the npm and Bower package managers in the engineering of several of its products.

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