For software versioning is 1.2.3 newer or older than 1.2.17?

Question

I was stumped when I was trying to upgrade the jar files in my pom.xml

For software versioning is 1.2.3 newer or older than 1.2.17?

I understand that in Maths, 0.3 is greater than 0.17 and is more recent

but if the '.' has nothing to do with decimals and is just a placeholder

then 3 is less than 17 and is older.

Incrementing sequences There are two schools of thought regarding how numeric version numbers are incremented. Most free and open-source software packages, including MediaWiki, treat versions as a series of individual numbers, separated by periods, with a progression such as 1.7.0, 1.8.0, 1.8.1, 1.9.0, 1.10.0, 1.11.0, 1.11.1, 1.11.2, and so on.

On the other hand, some software packages identify releases by decimal numbers: 1.7, 1.8, 1.81, 1.82, 1.9, etc. Decimal versions were common in the 1980s, for example with NetWare, DOS, and Microsoft Windows, but even in the 2000s have been for example used by Opera[7] and Movable Type.[8] In the decimal scheme, 1.81 is the minor version following 1.8, while maintenance releases (i.e. bug fixes only) may be denoted with an alphabetic suffix, such as 1.81a or 1.81b.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 05 '20 at 23:51

1

For software, 1.2.3 is older than 1.2.17. Each number after the . is compared with the number at the corresponding position. Since 17 > 3, therefore 1.2.17 is newer than 1.2.3 or in other words, 1.2.3 is older than 1.2.17. I've never seen an example in the last ten years where 1.2.3 is considered as a newer version than 1.2.17.

answered Jun 05 '20 at 23:51

Arvind Kumar Avinash

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ok, so they are not really decimals. I wonder how it is in the Dewey Decimal System that (book) libraries use. – likejudo Jun 17 '20 at 17:02
@likejudo - That's correct. Here `.` is used just as a separator. – Arvind Kumar Avinash Jun 17 '20 at 17:03
I don't know. Software programs are more akin to this system of classification. see my answer also. – likejudo Jun 17 '20 at 17:07

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 17 '20 at 17:07

In the Dewey Decimal System which libraries use, 1.2.3 would be newer than 1.2.17.

From this article, .805 is less (older) than .81

The Dewey Decimal system is a classification system used by libraries to arrange books via subject. ... After the three digits there is a decimal point and numbers after the decimal point show the sub-section of the subject area. Again they are shelved in numerical order e.g. 945.805 is shelved before 945.81.

For software versioning is 1.2.3 newer or older than 1.2.17?

2 Answers2