Question

The “About” of most computer programs have a version number, such as “2.1” where usually the first number is the major release and the second number is the minor release. At times the version number is followed by the build number enclosed in parentheses like “2.1 (456)” and more often than not, the build number is a 4 figure number. So I was wondering, how do programmers keep track of the build number?

Answer 1

For software produced on OS X, the build number is typically managed using Apple Generic Versioning. You can read the man page for agvtool to get started.

Here are some basic use cases for agvtool:

  $ agvtool what-version
  $ agvtool next-version -all
  $ agvtool new-version -all 456.7

Here’s an article from Dave Dribin about how to use it. It’s up to the developers to determine when the number should be incremented. (Examples of when you might increment the build number: for every commit, for a daily build, for a weekly build, for every build that is distributed to testers)