New Versioning Scheme for SmartOS Images

Today we’re excited to announce that we’re switching over to a new versioning scheme for SmartOS based images. Here are all the details you need to know:

Our old versioning scheme for SmartOS images was a bit confusing, and it wasn’t obvious what pkgsrc version a given image was built on. With the new versioning scheme, the major version number (the X in X.Y.Z) matches the pkgsrc release year (13=2013), the minor version (the Y in X.Y.Z) number matches the pkgsrc release quarter (1=Q1), and tiny version number (the Z in X.Y.Z) denotes a minor update.

We hope that with this new versioning scheme, it will be much clearer which pkgsrc version a given image was built on, and you’ll have a better sense of what to expect. We’ll be applying the new versioning scheme to all new or updated SmartOS images, so expect to see it in use on other SmartOS images soon. As for the Linux, Windows, and other non SmartOS images, we will continue to use the same SemVer-like versioning scheme for now.

Along with the new versioning scheme, we are also pleased to release an updated base 13.1.0 (and base 64) image built on pkgsrc 2013Q1. Jonathan Perkin, a Software Engineer at Joyent who hacks on pkgsrc and SmartOS for us, has provided a great overview of what's new in 2013Q1 in his blog post here.

There are a couple of updates in 2013Q1 that we wanted to highlight that you can take advantage of in our latest base image:

  • OpenSSL 1.0.1 with AES-NI support with significant improvement to crypto performance.
  • GCC Go support which will allow you to use the gccgo front-end to compile and run Go applications

As for the base 13.1.0 image itself, you can find the latest release notes on our wiki here for more details on what’s new.



Post written by Christopher Horrell