Candidateversioner

Candidateversioner is a software component used in release engineering to manage candidate versions of software artifacts and configurations as they move through CI/CD pipelines. It aggregates potential versions from build systems, artifact repositories, and external feeds, and prepares them for testing and deployment decisions.

Core functionality includes discovery, normalization, and enrichment of version metadata; evaluation against policy rules; dependency and compatibility checks; and a risk- or quality-based ranking of candidates. It often supports semantic versioning, date-based versions, and build identifiers, with an auditable decision history.

Lifecycle: sources feed candidates, which are evaluated against gates and constraints; a recommended subset or single version is selected for testing or staging; and approved candidates may be promoted to production. The system can label, tag, and document decisions and trigger remediation when issues arise.

Integration and governance: Candidateversioner exposes APIs and CLIs for CI pipelines and artifact stores, and works with tools such as Jenkins or GitHub Actions, Nexus or Artifactory, and issue trackers. It maintains an audit log and supports rollback to earlier candidates.

Common use cases include canary releases, dependency upgrades, and release-train planning, where centralized candidate management helps reduce risk and improve release predictability.