Semantic versioning

This is an excerpt from ASP.NET Core documentation on semantic versioning. The full document can be found here

The .NET Core Runtime roughly adheres to Semantic Versioning (SemVer), adopting the use of MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH versioning, using the various parts of the version number to describe the degree and type of change.Copy

MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH[-PRERELEASE-BUILDNUMBER]

The optional PRERELEASE and BUILDNUMBER parts are never part of supported releases and only exist on nightly builds, local builds from source targets, and unsupported preview releases.

Understand runtime version number changes

MAJOR is incremented when:

• Significant changes occur to the product, or a new product direction.
• Breaking changes were taken. There’s a high bar to accepting breaking changes.
• An old version is no longer supported.
• A newer MAJOR version of an existing dependency is adopted.

MINOR is incremented when:

• Public API surface area is added.
• A new behavior is added.
• A newer MINOR version of an existing dependency is adopted.
• A new dependency is introduced.

PATCH is incremented when:

• Bug fixes are made.
• Support for a newer platform is added.
• A newer PATCH version of an existing dependency is adopted.
• Any other change doesn’t fit one of the previous cases.

When there are multiple changes, the highest element affected by individual changes is incremented, and the following ones are reset to zero. For example, when MAJOR is incremented, MINOR and PATCH are reset to zero. When MINOR is incremented, PATCH is reset to zero while MAJOR is left untouched.