Cinegy Software Versioning
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The version number scheme of Cinegy software products is used for system maintenance and to facilitate problem reporting and tracking. At TechCon 2021, as part of the general overview of upcoming changes, we announced our intentions to improve the experience of customers using our software and particularly managing their licenses.
One of the changes we have introduced is changing our version number strategies – in reference to the year rather than some counter of editions. It was decided to shift from the numbering scheme to a scheme aligned with the year / month of initial product release. We hope, that migration to a date-based numbering scheme will serve our customers more effectively than the previously supported numbering scheme.
A pair value becomes the new equivalent to the previous "major number" concept. It indicates a stable set of sources and shows that the software version belongs to this set. The pair shall be formed from a numeric year indicator combined with numeric month indicator.
Starting from May 2021, all Cinegy products have been transferred to a new licensing system corresponding to the <year>.<month>.<build>.<revision> scheme.
For example, Cinegy Capture v21.4 indicates a release based on a version branch first made available one month surrounding April 2021.
The pair value grouping is used to associate a set of software releases with support for updates and within the licensing system to control access to later releases.
Our SLA contract offers support for "N" and "N-1" versions of our software, meaning you can use the latest released version ("N"), or the version immediately prior to the latest released one ("N-1"), and still get support. For Cinegy Capture, at the moment of writing this post, the latest released version ("N") is Cinegy Capture 21.11 and the previous supported version ("N-1") is Cinegy Capture 21.4. In the future, when, say, Cinegy Capture 22.3 version is released, it will become the latest released version ("N") and Cinegy Capture 21.4 will go out of support, making Cinegy Capture 21.11 the previous supported version ("N-1").
Version Number Definition
The structure for a unique numerical identifier is shown in the scheme below:
<Year>.<Month>.<Build>.<Revision>, |
where the elements are defined as:
Year – a value representing two last digits of the year of initial product release.
Month – a value representing the month of initial product release.
Build – an incrementing-only value that is used to identify specific software releases within a set.
Revision – the number incrementing when minor bugs are fixed and no modification to any associated product database is required.
Release Versions
Long-term support for a released version of the Cinegy product usually requires updating to fix some issues or add minor features. To indicate each minor release update, we add an R indicator with an update number to its version, which is increased by 1 each time (for example, R1, R2, R3, etc.).
For example, Cinegy Capture 21.4 R1 label represents Capture 21.4.6.3556 and Capture 21.4 R2 label represents 21.4.28.3574, both of which are composed from the v21.4 major version and recognized by release numbers: R1 and R2.