beautifier/js-beautify

Review version numbering policies

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#1,257 opened on Sep 18, 2017

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help wantedtype: discussiontype: task

Description

This project is extremely popular and as such needs to be stable, solid, and more conservative in versioning and changes.

We've been using semantic versioning reasonably accurately. There have been no breaks to backward compatibility in sometime, and the most changes are bug fixes.

However, semver only encodes intentional breaking changes, it doesn't address potentially risky changes. We should consider a change's risk of causing breakage in our version numbers.

Also, many projects do not not lock or even limit their version dependencies. Those that do often use ^x.y.z instead of ~x.y.z, which would mean they take updates when y or z change.

Consider switching to making major version updates under more circumstances to limit risk to dependent projects.

Contributor guide

Tech stack
javascript
Domain
releasedeveloper experience
Issue type
research
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
half day
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
mostly clear
Prerequisites
Understanding of semverFamiliarity with project release history
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
30
Research direction
Review the project's current versioning documentation and recent release history to identify past breaking changes. Look at the changelog, package.json, and any release notes. Consider how risk might be encoded into version bumps and propose a policy change that would increase major version updates for risky changes. This issue has been open since 2017 with minimal discussion, so a thorough analysis of the repository's current state is needed before proposing specific changes.
Review version numbering policies · beautifier/js-beautify#1257 | Good First Issue