Microsoft Azure image versioning

Microsoft Azure cloud platform has specific requirements for image version strings. Image versions must consist of three groups of up to ten digits digits separated by dots (\d{1,10}\.\d{1,10}\.\d{1,10}).

That requirement means that we cannot use our usual image version conventions such as 1.3.0-epa1 (early production access) or 1.3.0-S1 (security hotfix).

For this reason we use a custom convention on that platform: {major}.{minor}.{patch}{release type}{YYMMDD}{build number}.

For example, consider this version number: 1.3.302306200. Let's write it 1.3.3(0)(230620)(0) to show its components. It consists of the following parts:

• 1.3.3 — release version;
• 0 — release type (normal release);
• 230620 — build date (2023-06-20);
• 0 — build number (in case there are multiple builds made in the same day)

The release type component can have the following values:

• 0 — normal LTS release.
• 1 — security hotfit (S*)
• 2 — early production access (epa*)
• 3 — development build.