Proper version incrementation with multiple bug fixes in same release

Question

Say I have a three PRs going into the next release. Each PR is a bug fix and all have been approved for the next release. If the current version is 2.3.1, should the next version be 2.3.2 (count all three bugs as one patch increment) or 2.3.4 (one increment for each bug).

I have read the semver spec, but could find no mention of this specific scenario.

Answer 1

Version numbers should identify a package (executable, library,...) that a user could have access to. Any version numbering you share with your community is telling a user what versions exist. Creating the intermediate version numbers in your example is misleading because there isn't actually a version 2.3.3 that a user could download and run to get that fix without the other fixes.

Internally you may want to track per build version numbers or add a fourth level to your version which is the build number to provide more clarity. For larger systems, if you had a new version number for every modification, your version numbers would be out of control.