[Discuss] Plugin versioning convention

[ananzh]

Description
This is a discussion issue for plugin versioning. Currently, it is not clear about how to define version in opensearch_dashboards.yml for plugins. A suggestion is made here in this comment:

"version": "1.0.0",
"opensearchDashboardsVersion": "opensearchDashboards",

From this comment:
Interesting, I have never seen version being used in this way. I actually don't have a lot of context here. I left this section untouched from the autogenerated template when i created the VisBuilder plugin [Ref]

That being said, this is more relevant as far as i can tell for external plugins since its used to generate manifest files and check for version compatibility. e.g. https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch-Dashboards/blob/main/packages/osd-plugin-helpers/src/tasks/update_versions.ts#L19

I have a hunch that having this value has something to do with whether its an internal or external plugin since internal plugins do not need matching versions with dashboards versions. I'd keep it as is for now since it works for other plugins and create a followup task to research on the implications of this value.

[seanneumann]

Triage - Need to come up with guidance on this one. @kavilla

[kavilla]

Hey @ananzh,

By default plugins get built with 1.0.0 this can change but I believe the legacy convention to keep core plugin versions 1.0.0 without worrying about changing it. However, opensearchDashboardsVersion being set to opensearchDashboards allows for the plugin to work with any version of OpenSearch Dashboards. External plugins can do this as well as you mention.

Not sure if this behavior should be explicitly documented because even though plugins can set this there is guarantee that this will work properly.