Documentation/Nightly/Developers/Versioning

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Versioning

Project fork

While Slicer specific patches related to dependent project (i.e. VTK) are integrated upstream, it is not uncommon to build Slicer against a Slicer specific fork of the project.

For example: https://github.com/Slicer/VTK

Patches for tagged release

For each version of the project requiring some specific patches, a branch following that convention will be created: slicer-vX.Y.Z-YEAR-MONTH-DAY where X.Y.Z corresponds to the version of the project.

For example, in case of the Slicer/VTK fork, the branch slicer-v6.2.0-2015-03-02 has been created.

Patches for development branch

In this case, since there is no tag associated with the branch, the Slicer specific patch should be added to a branch named using the date of the commit parent of the Slicer branch: slicer-vX.Y-YEAR-MONTH-DAY-REV where X.Y corresponds to the fork release and REV corresponds to either the first 7 chars of git hash or SVN revision (for example r1234)

For example: slicer-v6.2.0-2015-02-24-70bad0e

Slicer Package naming scheme

Slicer-<MAJOR_VERSION>.<MINOR_VERSION>.<PATCH_VERSION>[-rc{1|2|3...}][-<TWEAK_VERSION>][-<DATE>][-svn<REV>][-dirty]-<ARCH>-<PLATFORM>

There are 2 types of builds, releases and developments:

Release

Special builds made on a given revision (e.g. r19033: "ENH: Slicer 4.0.1")

Don't contain date or revision number.

The optional suffix -rc{1|2|3|...} identifies the release candidates leading to a final release.

Eventually, a tweak number can be added (e.g. 4.0.1-1)

Development

Nightly or experimental builds

Contains suffixes after the major.minor.patch version

The suffix svn<REV> allows to identify the revision associated with the current package.

The -dirty prefix indicates if the package has been generated from a locally modified source tree.

Example of linux 64bits packages

• Proposal #1: Include revision number in package name

File name	date	build type	note
Slicer-4.0.0-linux-amd64	2011-11-24	release	release of Slicer 4.0.0
Slicer-4.0.0-2011-12-10-svn100-linux-amd64	2011-11-25	development	nightly build after 4.0.0
Slicer-4.0.1-rc1-linux-amd64	2012-01-04	release	release candidate 1 of Slicer 4.0.1
Slicer-4.0.1-rc1-2012-01-05-svn150-linux-amd64	2012-01-05	development	nightly build after the release candidate
Slicer-4.0.1-rc2-linux-amd64	2012-01-11	release	release candidate 2 of Slicer 4.0.1
Slicer-4.0.1-rc2-2012-01-12-svn200-linux-amd64	2012-01-12	development	nightly build after the release candidate
Slicer-4.0.1-linux-amd64	2012-01-14	release	release of Slicer 4.0.1
Slicer-4.0.1-2012-01-20-svn236-linux-amd64	2012-01-20	development	nightly build after 4.0.1
Slicer-4.0.1-1-linux-amd64	2012-01-28	release	tweak version 1 of Slicer 4.0.1
Slicer-4.0.2-linux.amd64	2012-06-05	release	release of Slicer 4.0.2

• Proposal #2: Increment minor version after each release, remove the concept of release candidate and tweak version.

With the transition to git workflow where branching is easier, after each release, the minor version in the trunk would be increased by one.

Patch release would be done using the maintenance branch associated with any given release.

File name	date	build type	branch	note
Slicer-4.5.0-1-linux-amd64	2015-12-11	release	4.5	tweak version 1 of Slicer 4.5.0
Slicer-4.6.0-2016-01-30-svn24950-linux-amd64	2016-01-30	development	master	nightly build after 4.5.0
...	...	...	...	...
Slicer-4.6.0-2016-02-06-svn25174-linux-amd64	2016-02-06	development	master	nightly build after 4.5.0
Slicer-4.5.1-2016-02-06-svn25175-linux-amd64	2016-02-06	development	4.5	manual build after 4.5.0-1
Slicer-4.5.1-linux-amd64	2015-02-07	release	4.5	patch version 1 of Slicer 4.5.0
...	...	...	...	...
Slicer-4.6.0-2016-03-05-svn25174-linux-amd64	2016-02-05	development	master	nightly build after 4.5.0
Slicer-4.6.0-linux-amd64	2016-03-06	release	master	release of 4.6.0 : next commit on master would increment minor version to start new dev cycle creation of maintenance branch 4.6
...	...	...	...	...
Slicer-4.6.0-2016-03-07-svn25180-linux-amd64	2016-03-07	development	master	nightly build after 4.6.0

Extension package - Naming scheme

• Create Extensions-XYZ-Nightly and Extensions-XYZ-Continuous tracks on CDash