# The Common Sense Versioning

**Not quite [Semantic Versioning (SemVer)][SemVer]**

> It is sad when instructions for using (mostly) three-number-segment version
> signatures are six pages long.

0.  The primary purpose of **MAJOR**.**MINOR**.**PATCH** version number is
    to hint the product consumer on time, efforts, and risks necessary to adopt
    the new product release. It is a hint, not a guarantee — no matter
    the rules, mistakes will happen, patch releases will break stuff, and
    thus following versioning rules does not cancel the need for adequate
    Quality Assurance (QA), locking-down, and tracking of the exact versions of
    tested dependencies in consumer's products.

1.  **PATCH** increments mean changes safe to adopt without any modifications in
    consumer's products — both backward-compatible internal changes, and
    backward-compatible additions of new functionality (_i.e._ both [SemVer]'s
    PATCH and MINOR updates).

2.  **MINOR** increments mean changes that require minor updates in consumer's
    products — simple, mechanical, local changes, that should not take
    much efforts and time (_i.e._ less severe of [SemVer]'s MAJOR updates).

3.  **MAJOR** increments mean (rare) changes that require major updates in
    consumer's products — global revisions of how the versioned product is
    consumed, and global re-works of how it should be consumed starting with
    the new major release (_i.e._ severe of [SemVer]'s MAJOR updates).

4.  Otherwise version numbers follow [SemVer] semantics, for compatibility with
    existing tools — they are compared starting with their left-most
    segment to the right-most one; increments of a segment are accompanied
    with reset to zero of all segments to the right of it; additional suffixes
    as `-alpha.0`, or `+1`, _etc._ are allowed and understood, in general, as
    special «risky» releases, which should be adopted at the risk of
    consumer, if he has consulted corresponding release notes, and knows what
    he is doing.

[SemVer]: https://semver.org