Release Versioning

PhpThunder uses a two-version system: a human-readable version tag and a VS Marketplace version. The mapping between them is deterministic so that multiple prerelease iterations of the same base version can coexist on the Marketplace.

Why two versions?

The VS Code Marketplace only accepts plain semver (major.minor.patch) and treats each unique version as a distinct extension entry. It also requires that prerelease versions be marked with the --pre-release flag rather than embedded in the version string.

This means we cannot use version tags like 2033.1.0-beta.1 and 2033.1.0-beta.2 directly as Marketplace versions — they would either be rejected or overwrite each other. We map every version tag to a unique marketplace version instead.

Channels

PhpThunder supports four release channels:

• stable — production releases
• rc — release candidates
• beta — public previews
• alpha — early testing

Version Mapping

The Marketplace version is computed from the version tag using a fixed scheme:

marketplacePatch = channelBase + (basePatch * 100) + index

The Marketplace version keeps the original major.minor of the tag; only the patch is recalculated.

Examples