Ensuring Compatibility for SAMSON Extensions: A Practical Guide.

In molecular modeling, managing different software versions can often lead to errors and inefficiencies—especially when it comes to ensuring compatibility. If you are using SAMSON Extensions to enhance your molecular design workflows, understanding how compatibility works between SAMSON and its SDK is critical. This post dives deep into how SAMSON ensures smooth integration and helps you avoid common pitfalls.

Why Compatibility Matters for Molecular Modeling

When software gets updated, new features are added, bugs are fixed, and functionalities are sometimes modified. However, with these changes, compatibility between older extensions and newer software versions can become a challenge. SAMSON tackles this through its semantic versioning policy for its SDK.

How SAMSON Evaluates Compatibility

Each SAMSON Extension is built using a version of SAMSON’s SDK, which itself follows a specific version format: major.minor.patch. SAMSON compares its version with the SDK version used by the extension during startup. It determines compatibility if the following conditions are satisfied:

  • Matching major version numbers: The major version of the SDK and SAMSON must be the same.
  • Smaller SDK minor version: The minor version of the SDK must be less than or equal to the minor version of SAMSON.

For example, if your SAMSON version is 1.7.8:

  • Extensions built with SDK version 1.3.5 or 1.7.7 are compatible.
  • However, extensions built with SDK version 1.8.5 won’t load, as SAMSON 1.7.8 cannot support a higher minor version.

Automatic Updates

To streamline your workflow, SAMSON will automatically update extensions to their latest compatible versions if an Internet connection is available. For instance:

  • If you have SAMSON 1.7.8 and an extension built with SDK version 1.5.2, SAMSON will load it.
  • Suppose a new version of the extension, built with SDK version 1.6.4, is published on SAMSON Connect. SAMSON will automatically update your extension to the new version and load it at startup.

However, note that if SAMSON and its SDK version are upgraded to 2.0.0 and a new extension version is built based on this new SDK, your current SAMSON (1.7.8) won’t load it. SAMSON will retain the most recent compatible version of the extension (in this example, version 1.6.4).

Practical Advice

To ensure compatibility:

  • Keep your version of SAMSON updated to access the latest features and bug fixes.
  • Verify the SDK version used to build an extension before installation.
  • Take advantage of automatic updates for extensions linked to your current SAMSON version.

This approach minimizes development conflicts and ensures that your molecular modeling tools remain functional and efficient.

For more details and examples, visit the official documentation page.

SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at SAMSON Connect.

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