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Why does GitHub offer "your version name prefix with the letter v?"

This is the contents of the right sidebar of GitHub:

Labeling recommendations. The usual practice of prefixing the names of your version. with the letter v. Some good tag names may be v1.0 or v2.3.4.

If the isnt tag is intended for use in production, add a preview version after the version name. Some good versions prior to release may be v0.2-alpha or v5.9-beta.3.

Semantic versioning If you are new to software release, we highly recommend reading semantic versioning .

I don’t understand why your version name prefix with the letter v ? Please explain to me why it is best to use prefix version names with the letter v ?

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Most open source projects and many tags on github and other open VCS sites, follow the Semantic Versioning format, also linked to the quote in your question. This is a version model that offers:

Given the version number of MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, increase the value:

  • BASIC version, when you make incompatible API changes,
  • MINOR version when you add functionality in a backward compatible way and
  • PATCH when you do backward compatibility bug fixes.

Additional shortcuts for pre-release and build metadata are available as extensions in the format MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH.

The SEMVER recommendation went through several of its own changes and at some point recommended that the "v" tag be preceded, but these days I think it doesn’t mention practice. However, many sites, projects, and conventions have followed this previous SEMVER practice and have not updated themselves to follow new guidelines.

My own opinion is that it probably doesn't matter if you start your tags with "v" or not. But it might be easier for you to use tools like sort if you don't.

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