versioning.md

Versioning

This strategy applies to all LibVLCSharp nuget packages (Forms, etc.).

LibVLC versions and current status

LibVLC 2.x is NOT supported by VideoLAN. Its usage is highly discouraged and there is no support.

LibVLC 3.x is the current stable engine version. This is the recommended version to use and LibVLCSharp works with this.

LibVLC 4.x is the current nightly engine version. LibVLCSharp 4 support is underway.

Versioning strategy

We are tied to the libvlc versioning as this binding targets the libvlc public API

We will follow its major version (i.e. libvlc 3.x -> LibVLCSharp 3.x and so on)

This makes it easier for people to understand and use the wrapper with libvlc, on all platforms.

So LibVLCSharp 3.x is only guaranteed to work properly with LibVLC 3.x builds, and LibVLCSharp 4.x with LibVLC 4.x. A project where LibVLCSharp and LibVLC have different major versions is not supported.

0.x versions

Initial LibVLCSharp releases were 0.x versions and targetted libvlc 3.

Long Term Support (LTS)

We will maintain up to 2 major libvlc versions at the same time, using 2 different branches, starting with libvlc 3

So when libvlc 4 gets released, we will maintain both LibVLCSharp 3.x and LibVLCSharp 4.x using the same nuget package id.

When libvlc 5 lands, it is likely that we remove support for libvlc 3. We will however still accept PRs and contributions from the community for older LibVLCSharp versions.

Breaking changes

Since our major version (i.e. [1].0.0) is tied to the libvlc major version, if we need to introduce breaking changes in the wrapper, we will bump the minor version (i.e. 1.[1].0) and reserve the last number (i.e. 1.1.[1]) for improvements and general maintenance (non breaking API changes).