Chapter 8. Versioning

Philosophy: When you get to the fork in the road, take it.

Yoggi Berra, New York Yankees Hall of Fame player and coach

There really is only one version number that anyone should care about the file version of the files you ship to your customers. Still, this topic gets easily confused and convoluted because of the numerous ways that this file version number is generated. Furthermore, with the introduction of the Microsoft .NET Framework and the .NET assembly versions, this topic gets even more confusing as people move from unmanaged (native) to managed code.

This chapter addresses all these topics and addresses helpful ways to keep these numbers straight. The scope of this chapter is narrowed to versioning as it applies to source code control trees, build numbers, file version, and setup. I also touch on the difference between .NET assemblies (basically a DLL or EXE) versions and file versions. For more information on how the different assembly versions are handled, refer to Jeffrey Richter's book, Applied Microsoft .NET Framework, which is the single best source for .NET programming. Finally, I discuss the impact of versioning to your setup program and how to handle this.