New Library Version Number?

[Justin Refice]

A common question, and a topic of many discussions within the Accellera UVM Working Group (UVM-WG), was: What should the version of the new UVM release be?

Since 1.0-ea, UVM releases have followed the conventions of Semantic Versioning, with MAJOR and MINOR version numbers, and an optional PATCH version letter and/or additional labels.  For example, 1.1d-rc2 was MAJOR=1, MINOR=1, PATCH=d, LABEL=rc2. 

The UVM-WG wanted to maintain semantic versioning moving forward, but at the same time we wanted to indicate what year/revision of the 1800.2 standard we were implementing.  The simplest answer was to set the implementation's MAJOR number to the 1800.2 revision year.  The library may have MINOR and PATCH updates, but all versions with MAJOR number 2017 will be compatible with 1800.2-2017.  If/when the 1800.2 standard is revised in the future, then the MAJOR number will change.

That said, why start with 0.9 as opposed to 1.0?  This was more of a subjective decision...

The 2017 0.9 release is fully functional, but effectively undocumented beyond a basic README.md which describes how to install the kit.  Releasing it as "1.0" was viewed as disingenuous, as we knew it was incomplete from a documentation perspective.  Why not 0.0 then, or 1.0-ea?  Again, subjective.  The UVM-WG didn't want to release it under the heading of “0.0”, "beta", "early adopter", "release candidate", etc. because all of those imply a certain lack of functionality.  When all was said and done, the UVM-WG settled on "0.9", as it made it clear that something was missing, while not necessarily indicating that the library was in some way "unsafe to use". 

The UVM-WG is hard at work on "2017 1.0", which will have the complete documentation of the APIs that the implementation supports above and beyond the 1800.2 LRM.  In the meantime, we will be actively monitoring this forum, hoping to answer any questions you may have regarding the library.

Thanks for your participation!

Sincerely,

Justin Refice (UVM-WG Chair) & Mark Strickland (UVM-WG Vice-Chair)