[GH-ISSUE #577] Explain the motivation behind the minor version #2132

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GiteaMirror · 2026-04-20T10:05:47-05:00

GiteaMirror commented

2026-04-20 10:05:47 -05:00

Originally created by @samoylovfp on GitHub (Dec 23, 2019).
Original GitHub issue: https://github.com/semver/semver/issues/577

The meaning of the minor version as "adding backwards compatible features" is clear, but the intent to communicate if a new functionality was added is not obvious.

There must be a reason why it was added and the "why use semantic versioning" part of the website sounds like the best place to add it.

One use case I think could illustrate the need for the minor version is when the need arises to roll back to previous version of a library, you can only safely roll back to a version with the same "major.minor" number, since your code might have already used a feature that is present in this "minor" version but is absent from the previous one.

Is there a better explanation for the need of the minor version and does it make sense to add this to the website text as well?

Originally created by @samoylovfp on GitHub (Dec 23, 2019). Original GitHub issue: https://github.com/semver/semver/issues/577 The meaning of the minor version as "adding backwards compatible features" is clear, but the intent to communicate if a new functionality was added is not obvious. There must be a reason why it was added and the "why use semantic versioning" part of the website sounds like the best place to add it. One use case I think could illustrate the need for the minor version is when the need arises to roll back to previous version of a library, you can only safely roll back to a version with the same "major.minor" number, since your code might have already used a feature that is present in this "minor" version but is absent from the previous one. Is there a better explanation for the need of the minor version and does it make sense to add this to the website text as well?

GiteaMirror added the question label 2026-04-20 10:05:47 -05:00

GiteaMirror commented

2026-04-20 10:05:48 -05:00

@alexandrtovmach commented on GitHub (Jun 12, 2020):

It's not related to website, moved to main repo

@alexandrtovmach commented on GitHub (Jun 12, 2020): It's not related to website, moved to main repo

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Reference: github-starred/semver#2132