Contents

• Prolegomenon
• Clearing
• Prior Art
• Alpha
• Answers
• Whys
• Functions

Prolegomenon

There are only 3 types of civilizations:

+ those who reach their nearest star neighbour
+ those who reach their nearest galaxy neighbour
+ those who perish

There is a single process: the development.

If we ought to start the process then the first step is towards Alpha Centauri.

Clearing

Development versioning raises the following issues:

A. What is the first version?
B. What is considered a version modification,
    and how to classify the magnitude of the modification?
C. What is the end version?

Prior Art

The first two questions (A and B) seem to be answered well enough by semver. That's why, in a strong sense, alpha versioning is a backwards-compatible in-syntax-only specialization of semver. The semver answers:

A. What is the first version? 0.0.0
B. What is considered a version modification? major.minor.patch

The third question, C, 'what is the end version', is never asked by semver.

Alpha

Alpha Versioning can be short-named as αver. The α is a lowercase alpha, however, it can be easily misread as an o which can conote that the development is over.

Answers

A. What is the first version for an αver project?

0.0.0-0

B. What is considered a version modification in an αver project?

αver strongly implies to always use the last version: every version update is considered as breaking the public interface (it might not, but it should be considered when updating). The difference between version 0.0.0-123 and 0.0.0-124 could be as big "as the difference between a dog and the Dog constellation".

The alpha versioning segments:

0.0.0-0
| | | |
| | | | - the developmenter digit, reserved for development update
| | |
| | | - the revisioner digit, reserved for yearly revision
| |
| | - the launcher digit, reserved for century launch
|
| - the ender digit, reserved for the last flip from 0 to 1, signifying the end of development

The development starts at 0.0.0-0.

Every update will increase the developmenter digit by 1. The first update is from 0.0.0-0 to 0.0.0-1.

Once a year, or every few years, after a general revision, the revisioner digit is increased by 1.

The package can be considered as launched in it's first century, but every other century or so, a relaunch may be required.

C. What is the end version of an αver project?

1.0.0

What semver considers as the first 'viable', 'public-acceptable' version, αver considers the final, last, ultimate version.

Whys

Why keep the first 0 if it is there in order to feel as if it will never be reached? As a reminder that the development has not yet even started, that a project is always towards alpha.

Why should we ask 'what is the end version'? All things must come to an end: a life, the universe, the development.

Why to think in centuries and millenia? See prolegomenon, those distances require much more than millenia. Also, to think of a project in terms of days and weeks is to not have reflected enough on the development process: we have not started developing yet.

Functions

Alpha versioning packages provide verification and update utilities for αver values.

Supported languages:

• JavaScript/TypeScript

import {
    isAlphaVersion,
    updateAlphaVersion,
} from 'alpha-versioning';


const main = () => {
    const value = '0.1.2-3';
    const isAlpha = isAlphaVersion(value); // true
    const update = updateAlphaVersion(value) // '0.1.2-4'
}

main();