Versioning

Software Versioning

Any changes pushed to the main branch (regardless of if the change is instrument-specific, or project-wide) should be tagged with a version number. This project uses semantic versioning, in which version numbers should follow a convention of x.y.z, where:

x = The main version number. Increase when making incompatible API changes.
y = The feature number. Increase when change contains a new feature with or without bug fixes.
z = The hotfix number. Increase when change only contains bug fixes.

This convention was discussed and decided on in this GitHub issue.

Data Product Versioning

IMAP data products are versioned with the convention vXX.YY, where:

XX = The major version. Increase when any change to the processing algorithm is made.
YY = The minor version. Increase when data are reprocessed with the same algorithm, but with different ancillary
     files or calibrations (for example, updated SPICE kernels). The minor version is also reset to 0 whenever the
     major version number is updated.

Version numbers are specific to an instrument. In other words, each IMAP instrument has their own version number that is only updated when that instrument’s algorithm is changed, or that instrument’s data are reprocessed. The version is updated independently of the other IMAP instruments.

This convention was discussed and decided on in this GitHub issue.