CRYPTOPP_VERSION has reached its limits

[Jeffrey Walton]

Hi Everyone,

It appears CRYPTOPP_VERSION has reached its limits. We cannot express Crypto++ 8.10 in the existing CRYPTOPP_VERSION format.

I think we may need to make each part 2 digits. I.e., 081000.

Please comment at https://github.com/weidai11/cryptopp/issues/1239.

Jeff

[Colin Brown]

G'day,

Since we need to rewrite the version parsing code anyway, I'd like to suggest switching to calendar versioning for a permanent fix.
The current system breaks at version 8.10.0. Any fix (hex, 4-digits, etc.) just delays the problem.
Calendar versioning solves it forever:

• Never breaks (works until year 9999)
• Shows when released (2025.10 vs 8.9)
• Used by Ubuntu, TeX Live, Cloudflare and other stable projects

Same effort, we have to rewrite the parsing logic no matter what solution is picked

This permanently fixes the versioning limit while making versions more meaningful. 

Happy to help implement if there's interest.