5 \___|\___/|_| \_\_____|
7 Version Numbers and Releases
9 Curl is not only curl. Curl is also libcurl. They're actually individually
10 versioned, but they mostly follow each other rather closely.
12 The version numbering is always built up using the same system:
17 X is main version number
20 N is pre-release number
22 One of these numbers will get bumped in each new release. The numbers to the
23 right of a bumped number will be reset to zero. If Z is zero, it may not be
24 included in the version number. The pre release number is only included in
25 pre releases (they're never used in public, official, releases).
27 The main version number will get bumped when *really* big, world colliding
28 changes are made. The release number is bumped when big changes are
29 performed. The patch number is bumped when the changes are mere bugfixes and
30 only minor feature changes. The pre-release is a counter, to identify which
31 pre-release a certain release is.
33 When reaching the end of a pre-release period, the version without the
34 pre-release part will be released as a public release.
36 It means that after release 1.2.3, we can release 2.0 if something really big
37 has been made, 1.3 if not that big changes were made or 1.2.4 if mostly bugs
38 were fixed. Before 1.2.4 is released, we might release a 1.2.4-pre1 release
39 for the brave people to try before the actual release.
41 Bumping, as in increasing the number with 1, is unconditionally only
42 affecting one of the numbers (except the ones to the right of it, that may be
43 set to zero). 1 becomes 2, 3 becomes 4, 9 becomes 10, 88 becomes 89 and 99
44 becomes 100. So, after 1.2.9 comes 1.2.10. After 3.99.3, 3.100 might come.
46 All original curl source release archives are named according to the libcurl
47 version (not according to the curl client version that, as said before, might
50 As a service to any application that might want to support new libcurl
51 features while still being able to build with older versions, all releases
52 have the libcurl version stored in the curl/curlver.h file using a static
53 numbering scheme that can be used for comparison. The version number is
56 #define LIBCURL_VERSION_NUM 0xXXYYZZ
58 Where XX, YY and ZZ are the main version, release and patch numbers in
59 hexadecimal. All three numbers are always represented using two digits. 1.2
60 would appear as "0x010200" while version 9.11.7 appears as "0x090b07".
62 This 6-digit hexadecimal number does not show pre-release number, and it is
63 always a greater number in a more recent release. It makes comparisons with
64 greater than and less than work.
66 This number is also available as three separate defines:
67 LIBCURL_VERSION_MAJOR, LIBCURL_VERSION_MINOR and LIBCURL_VERSION_PATCH.