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Reading version numbersThe leftmost number (1) is called the major version. The middle number (2) is called the minor version. The rightmost number (3) is called the revision but it may also be referred to as a "point release" or "subminor version".
Version Identification : To create a specific version of a system, you've got to specify the versions of the system components that ought to be included in it. In a large software system, there are hundreds to software components, each of which may exist in several different versions.
Numbering each version helps to distinguish one version from another. It may be suitable, simply to number each version, regardless of the changes, using consecutive whole numbers e.g. V 1.0; V 2.0; V 3.0 etc. to track which version of the document is being worked on.
In software development, versioning allows development teams to keep track of changes they make to the project code. The changes may include new functions, features or bug fixes. Minor changes can also be tracked in a similar manner.
In version 1.9.0.1:
1: Major revision (new UI, lots of new features, conceptual change, etc.)
9: Minor revision (maybe a change to a search box, 1 feature added, collection of bug fixes)
0: Bug fix release
1: Build number (if used)—that's why you see the .NET framework using something like 2.0.4.2709
You won't find a lot of apps going down to four levels, 3 is usually sufficient.
There is the Semantic Versioning specification
This is the summary of version 2.0.0:
Given a version number MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, increment the:
- MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes,
- MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards-compatible manner, and
- PATCH version when you make backwards-compatible bug fixes.
Additional labels for pre-release and build metadata are available as extensions to the MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH format.
It can be very arbitrary, and differs from product to product. For example, with the Ubuntu distribution, 8.04 refers to 2008.April
Typically the left most (major) numbers indicate a major release, and the further you go to the right, the smaller the change involved.
major.minor[.maintenance[.build]]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_versioning#Numeric
Numbers can be useful as described by other answers, but consider how they can also be rather meaningless... Sun, you know SUN, java: 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 1.5 or 5 then 6. In the good old Apple II version numbers Meant Something. Nowadays, people are giving up on version numbers and going with silly names like "Feisty fig" (or something like that) and "hardy heron" and "europa" and "ganymede". Of course this is far less useful because, you're going to run out of moons of jupiter before you stop changing the program, and since there's no obvious ordering you can't tell which is newer.
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