An important questions in software deployment and testing is “What is the version of the software I am looking at”. It is frustrating for a tester or an end user not knowing if the planned upgrade is performed or not. Having a solid version numbering policy is a solution to overcome these problems.

There are several places where you want to have the version number of your software available: - visible for the end user on the login screen. - visible in the software distribution package (war / ear) for the deployment operator. - visible in configuration files. - and even visible in the deployed online manual.

The task of proper version numbering can be performed manually. This takes a solid knowledge of all places where this number is used and a good deal of perseverance when performing these repeating actions. In a project under development, using an agile development method, there will be frequent builds and releases (daily or even hourly). This asks for automated build numbering. When using maven and subversion, this task can be automated with the maven buildnumber plugin.

(more…)