I created a V language non-experimental release version management system. I wanted to make it official after a re-write in V.

[codemanticism]

Describe the feature

This is it: https://github.com/codemanticism/vzilla. I wrote it in C, because I was more familiar with C than with V.

Use Case

That way it is easier to manage different versions of V and also makes V look less like an amateur project and more like something that in the future could be used professionally. I tested it on my Fedora Silverblue machine. It worked.

Version used

It is supposed to support all versions that start with "0." from 0.1 to 0.5.

Environment details (OS name and version, etc.)

V full version	V 0.5.0 e2f5d6c
OS	linux, Linux version 6.18.6-200.fc43.x86_64 (mockbuild@23ec807669c748d792f74f555839fc9a) (gcc (GCC) 15.2.1 20251211 (Red Hat 15.2.1-5), GNU ld version 2.45.1-1.fc43) #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sun Jan 18 18:57:00 UTC 2026 (chroot)
Processor	8 cpus, 64bit, little endian, AMD Ryzen 3 3100 4-Core Processor
Memory	4.19GB/15.53GB
V executable	/usr/bin/vlang0-5/v
V last modified time	2025-12-31 20:00:43
V home dir	OK, value: /usr/bin/vlang0-5
VMODULES	OK, value: /var/home/gabib/.vmodules
VTMP	OK, value: /tmp/v_1000
Current working dir	OK, value: /var/home/gabib/projects/vzilla
Git version	git version 2.52.0
V git status	N/A
.git/config present	false
cc version	cc (GCC) 15.2.1 20251211 (Red Hat 15.2.1-5)
gcc version	gcc (GCC) 15.2.1 20251211 (Red Hat 15.2.1-5)
clang version	N/A
tcc version	tcc version 0.9.28rc 2025-02-13 HEAD@f8bd136d (x86_64 Linux)
tcc git status	N/A
emcc version	N/A
glibc version	ldd (GNU libc) 2.42

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[JalonSolov]

Heh. Every "version" of V so far has been "experimental", since it is still in Beta.

[codemanticism]

Does it work it on your machine?

[JalonSolov]

I have not tried it.

I do have a few suggestions...

Do git rm main to remove the main executable, and add a .gitignore file to keep from checking it in again.

For semantic versions, the 3 fields are major, minor, and patch, rather than big, medium, and mini.

Not every system has a ~/Downloads dir. I'd suggest changing to ~/.v_downloads or similar, and doing a mkdir call before trying to use it. Ignore failures if it already exists. Or check if it exists before calling mkdir - whichever you prefer.

A few blank lines in the source won't take much room, but will make looking through the code easier.

Overall, nice work. Will make switching between versions simpler for a lot of people.

Might want to give it a try in V, possibly by running v translate main.c to see if that does a good enough job. If it works, you can easily make the code work on Windows, too, without a lot of extra effort in the code.

[codemanticism]

Thanks I already incorporated your suggestions :).

[spytheman]

cmd/tools/oldv.v already exists, and supports compiling V for all previous commits, not just the tagged releases