1<!-- 2Copyright (C) Daniel Stenberg, <daniel@haxx.se>, et al. 3 4SPDX-License-Identifier: curl 5--> 6 7Version Numbers and Releases 8============================ 9 10 Curl is not only curl. Curl is also libcurl. They are actually individually 11 versioned, but they usually follow each other closely. 12 13 The version numbering is always built up using the same system: 14 15 X.Y.Z 16 17 - X is main version number 18 - Y is release number 19 - Z is patch number 20 21## Bumping numbers 22 23 One of these numbers get bumped in each new release. The numbers to the right 24 of a bumped number are reset to zero. 25 26 The main version number is bumped when *really* big, world colliding changes 27 are made. The release number is bumped when changes are performed or 28 things/features are added. The patch number is bumped when the changes are 29 mere bugfixes. 30 31 It means that after release 1.2.3, we can release 2.0.0 if something really 32 big has been made, 1.3.0 if not that big changes were made or 1.2.4 if only 33 bugs were fixed. 34 35 Bumping, as in increasing the number with 1, is unconditionally only 36 affecting one of the numbers (except the ones to the right of it, that may be 37 set to zero). 1 becomes 2, 3 becomes 4, 9 becomes 10, 88 becomes 89 and 99 38 becomes 100. So, after 1.2.9 comes 1.2.10. After 3.99.3, 3.100.0 might come. 39 40 All original curl source release archives are named according to the libcurl 41 version (not according to the curl client version that, as said before, might 42 differ). 43 44 As a service to any application that might want to support new libcurl 45 features while still being able to build with older versions, all releases 46 have the libcurl version stored in the `curl/curlver.h` file using a static 47 numbering scheme that can be used for comparison. The version number is 48 defined as: 49 50```c 51#define LIBCURL_VERSION_NUM 0xXXYYZZ 52``` 53 54 Where `XX`, `YY` and `ZZ` are the main version, release and patch numbers in 55 hexadecimal. All three number fields are always represented using two digits 56 (eight bits each). 1.2 would appear as "0x010200" while version 9.11.7 57 appears as `0x090b07`. 58 59 This 6-digit hexadecimal number is always a greater number in a more recent 60 release. It makes comparisons with greater than and less than work. 61 62 This number is also available as three separate defines: 63 `LIBCURL_VERSION_MAJOR`, `LIBCURL_VERSION_MINOR` and `LIBCURL_VERSION_PATCH`. 64
