Developer Area/Version Numbering Policy

This page documents the Mahara version numbering scheme, and how the version numbers of new releases are decided.

From 15.04 on

Starting with the Mahara 15.04 series (in April 2015), Mahara releases will be numbered YY.MM.Z, for example, "15.04.0".

The "YY.MM" portion of the version number is the major version or series. It encodes the year and month that the series is scheduled to be released. 15.04 = April 2015. Mahara releases a new major version every 6 months, in April and October, so this will increment as follows: 15.04; 15.10; 16.04; 16.10; etc.

The "Z" portion of the version number is the minor version or point release. It starts at 0 and is incremented with each minor release for a series. Minor releases are released on an as-needed basis, and not by any predetermined schedule. These will increment like so: 15.04.0; 15.04.1; 15.04.2; etc.

1.10 and earlier

The Mahara 1.10 series was the last to use the older Mahara release numbering system. Under this system, Mahara major releases were number 0.9; 1.0; 1.1; 1.2; etc. And minor releases were number 1.2.0; 1.2.1; 1.2.2; 1.2.4; etc.

How the Release Version Changes

Stable branch

Imagine the current stable version is 15.04.6. This version number will be present in the lib/version.php file in the git commit tagged with 15.04.6_RELEASE, and it will also be in the download package on Launchpad. In the HEAD commit of the 15.04_STABLE branch, lib/version.php will contain '15.04.7testing'. Bug fixes will be made from time to time here.

At the point when a release is ready, the version in lib/version.php will be changed to 15.04.07, the release made and the version changed again to 15.04.08testing.

Dev branch

Meanwhile, the master git branch will be preparing for the next major version, 15.10. So, its lib/version.php file will contain the version 15.10.0dev. When we branch for 15.10, we'll create the 15.10_STABLE branch, and the lib/version.php on that branch will be changed to 15.10.0rc1, while master will be bumped to 16.04.0dev

Version bumps and database upgrades

Mahara also has an internal version number, also known as the database version. This version number is stored in the htdocs/lib/version.php file in $config->version. It is not meant to be human readable, but is used by the program to determine what code to run when upgrading.

The database version has the format YYYYMMDDZZ. On a stable branch, this number should only ever be incremented by one. On the master branch, the current date should be used. This will ensure that someone who has upgraded on a stable branch (e.g. from 1.4.0 to 1.4.2) will still have a $config->version less than the first upgrade on the 1.5 or master branches.

If you are pushing the same database upgrade to both master and to one or more stable branches, you should increment the $config->version by one on your patches for the stable branches, and use the current date on master. In this case you must also ensure that your upgrade will not fail, (and will have no effect) when it is run a second time, because it will be run when users do their stable upgrade, and again when the next major upgrade comes out.

Plugin versions are messier, and also complicated by the fact that Mahara's upgrade system upgrades core all the way before it begins upgrading plugins. This has potential to cause nasty problems. For example, a plugin upgrade could refer to a db column in a core table which gets removed from core before the plugin upgrade has a chance to run. This can sometimes be avoided by forcing plugin upgrades at points during a core upgrade. However, that will upgrade the plugin all the way before it continues the core upgrade, with the same potential issues! As a last resort, $config->minupgradefrom can be used to force all upgrades to stop at a certain fixed point before continuing, but this is a hassle for users.

If you push your code to gerrit using the command make push, the precommit checks will run the script test/versioncheck.php, which will test for some common version numbering mistakes.