Useful versioning scheme for a git project? [duplicate]

Question

I have a small github project, which I need to add an option to to output some version number on the commandline.

The problem is I have no idea how to "compute" the version number. Is this some random process? Should I just start at 1.0 (probably creating a tag or something), and put a number after . for fixes?

I know this question is a bit vague... I just had never to deal with this, and want to use some sane versioning scheme.

EDIT

Im also interested into how to update this version number automatically, maybe using something like a git hook.

Answer 1

Have a look at Semantic Versioning. What constitutes a major, minor and patch version increment depends on your project, but the site is a good starting point. You might also want to include the first few digits of the git commit ID in the version, so you can find it later.