[Bug 327830] We need to do a better job educating and helping folks with their version numbers

Bugzilla Link	327830
Status	NEW
Importance	P3 normal
Reported	Oct 14, 2010 17:55 EDT
Modified	Sep 30, 2020 12:33 EDT
Reporter	Ian Bull

Description

I noticed that the a Feature in SR1 had a version number less than that of SR0. In SR1 the version was 3.0.0.R30x.... whereas in SR0 it was 3.0.0.v201005.... Because qualifiers are compared using strings, the 'v' comes after the 'R'.

While I brought this to the attention of the team in question, I think this raises a bigger concern. We put a lot of faith in our version numbers, and it's very easy to get these wrong. API tools help, but they won't necessarily catch bundles / features that are going backwards in time (especially if you don't update your baseline).

I think we need two things here:

1. Some general education about versions and the consequences of getting these wrong. -- I assume once you've 'released' something with a version, you should never go back.

2. Some tooling in the release train to help catch backward versioning.