GNU Astronomy Utilities manual

1.5 Version numbering

The general Gnuastro package has a version number. It contains various programs and each of those also has its own version number. The version numbers for both are two numbers with a point (.) between them. The left number is the major version number while the right one is the minor version number. Note that the numbers are not decimals, so version 2.34 of a program is much more recent than version 2.5, which is not equal to 2.50!

The current version of Gnuastro is 0.1 and the version numbers of its various components are shown in GNU Astronomy Utilities list. To see the version of a program you are using, you can use the --version option, see Common options.

GNU Astronomy Utilities and all programs within it start with version number 0.1. For the programs, the minor version number is increased with any few bug fixes or small improvements which the developers decide is significant for a public release. So minor releases can be viewed as ad-hoc improvements. The major version number is set by a major goal which is defined by the developers of that particular program before hand.

For Gnuastro, its minor version number increases by 1 on every release (which contains an arbitrary number of updated version numbers for the programs or the general package). You can see the details from the NEWS file that comes with that distribution and is also available online to view before you download.

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GNU Astronomy Utilities manual, November 2015.