Understanding SAMSON Extension Compatibility: What Every Molecular Modeler Should Know

For molecular modelers working with SAMSON, ensuring that your extensions are up-to-date and compatible with your installed version of SAMSON is essential for seamless workflows. The compatibility between SAMSON Extensions and the SAMSON platform hinges on version management. Here, we break down the compatibility rules and provide practical examples to help you navigate this with ease.

How Compatibility Works

SAMSON follows semantic versioning principles, which regulate compatibility between the SAMSON version and the version of the SDK, used to develop a SAMSON Extension. Compatibility depends on matching (and sometimes differing) version numbers. This ensures that extensions can load reliably without errors at startup.

A SAMSON Extension will only be loaded if the version of SAMSON installed on your system is compatible with the SDK version that was used to build the extension. Compatibility is determined as follows:

  • Major version match: The major version of the SDK and SAMSON must be the same.
  • Minor version flexibility: The minor version of the SDK must be smaller than or equal to the minor version of SAMSON.

Examples of Compatibility

Let’s clarify these rules with examples:

  • If your SAMSON version is 1.7.8 and a SAMSON Extension was built with SDK version 1.5.2, the Extension is compatible and will load, because both share the major version number “1,” and the minor version of the SDK (5) is smaller than SAMSON’s minor version (7).
  • Similarly, an SDK version of 1.6.4 will also be compatible with SAMSON 1.7.8.
  • However, SDK version 1.8.5 will not be compatible with SAMSON 1.7.8, since the minor SDK version (8) exceeds the minor SAMSON version (7).

Why Updating SAMSON Matters

To make the most out of new features and extensions, keeping SAMSON up-to-date is vital. For instance:

  • If a new version, SAMSON 2.0.0, is released and extensions are updated to use SDK 2.0.0, you’ll need to update SAMSON to maintain compatibility and benefit from improvements.

Fortunately, SAMSON can update extensions automatically when new compatible versions are released on SAMSON Connect. Automatic updates only proceed if the SAMSON version on your system supports the SDK version of the new extension, so there’s no risk of breaking compatibility.

Staying Informed

Understanding compatibility rules empowers molecular modelers to avoid frustrations caused by incompatibilities. Before installing or updating extensions, check their build SDK version and compare it to the SAMSON version installed on your system.

To dive deeper into versioning and compatibility, visit the full SAMSON documentation page.

SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at https://www.samson-connect.net.

Comments are closed.