[cbdfghh]

The point of Semantic Versioning is to tell you something.

So let's say you have Compiler 5.3.2

It means that the important thing is compiler #5. Upgrading from 4 to 5 is a _Big Deal_. You may have to rewrite all your code.

Within 5, you have a version 3. 3 has features A,B,C which 2 doesn't have. Most additions go there. So it should be safe to upgrade.

Within that, you have bugfix #2. That _should_ always be upgraded, unless you rely on undocumented features.

So it's easy for me to tell if I should upgrade.

So upgrading from Apache 1 to Apache 2 may brake config scripts and .htaccess files. Don't upgrade on production build.

Upgrading Apache 1.1 to 1.2, See README, Should be fine, do a small test on your testing machine.

Upgrading Apache 1.1.2 to 1.1.3. Probably a security fix. Do so. Immediately.

---------

The OP's numbering system doesn't tell me anything. should I upgrade 5.4.3.2 to 5.5.0.0? Will it be safe? Probably not. You may have to schedule a full testing load just to be sure.

What about from 5.4.3.2 to 6.4.0.0? Same thing. You have to do a full testing.

And if you _really_ break old code, do everyone a favor and rename your project (So, no, please don't call Go C++ V.13 or something)

[eridius]

You seem to be very confused. Upgrading from 5.4.3.2 to 5.5.0.0 with my scheme is no different than upgrading from 54.3.2 to 55.0.0 with traditional semantic versioning. I'm not suggesting any change to the actual model of semver, I'm literally just saying that I want to tack a new component on to the front for human consumption purposes.

[cbdfghh]

In a library, breaking releases should be far fewer than "regular" feature releases. My point is that if you break code more than a few times in the history of your library, you'll get a revolution. For example, see Python 2->3, which was a relatively "small" fix (which just happened to affect pretty much half of existing string processing code), and PHP, where they seem to introduce and then turn around and remove those features every couple years (mysql, no, mysqli, no, PDO? Are we there yet?)

[eridius]

There's a big difference between massive sweeping breaking changes, and small breaking changes. What I care about is the ability to do smaller breaking changes, and the new "major" version number that I tacked onto the front is to signify the large sweeping changes instead of the smaller breaking changes.

[lisivka]

As user, I see no difference because result is same: code is broken. You are trying to introduce full scale for the binary thing. If breaking change is small, then delay it until next major release.

[eropple]

As a consumer, that first number becomes irrelevant if it's not the "is this going to break my shit?" number. Why have it? It's not communicating something useful to me. Cut it.

[eridius]

But it does communicate something useful! It tells you "this isn't a huge change, it's a minor change that just happens to break backwards-compatibility in some fashion". Most products reserve major version number changes for when there's particularly large or important changes to the product. Committing to semantic versioning means losing that. The upside is your package manager knows when it's safe to silently upgrade. The downside is the actual humans looking at your product have no idea which versions they need to actually do some work to support, versus which ones just have minor breaking changes that may not even affect them.

[eropple]

Let me try this a different way:

I expect to audit dependencies I use when they break API compatibility in any way. That's a feature, not a bug. Having a "well, the maintainer think this is a bigger break" number does nothing. It's still a break. It's still a major version change.

[irishsultan]

In Semver the first number is not "is this going to break my shit?", it's "is it potentially breaking my shit?" in this proposed alternative the first number is "this is definitely going to break your shit", the second number is "this may break your shit, check the changelog to see if it affects you"

[eropple]

Having a "may" in there is the same thing as a "will" from the perspective of downstream. It still needs to be audited and checked. There's no value in splitting this out.

[chj]

Sounds like using three numbers is not bad enough.