If you’ve ever built a SAMSON Extension, compiled it successfully, and watched it vanish quietly at startup, you’re not alone. One common pain for molecular modelers and developers working with the SAMSON platform is sudden plugin incompatibility. The culprit? In most cases, it’s SDK version mismatch.
SAMSON uses semantic versioning both for its internal version number (e.g. 9.0.0) and for Extensions, which ensures plugin compatibility — but also means you have to be careful.
Understanding Compatibility Rules
Each SAMSON Extension is built with a specific version of the SAMSON SDK. At startup, SAMSON checks whether a plugin’s SDK version is compatible with its own. The compatibility rules are very specific:
- Major version numbers must match exactly.
- Minor version of the SDK must be lower than the minor version of SAMSON itself.
This means that an Extension built with SDK version 1.5.2 will work with SAMSON 1.7.8, but an Extension built with SDK 1.8.5 will not.
Typical Scenario
Imagine you’ve published an Extension that was built with SDK 1.6.4. A SAMSON user running version 1.7.8 will load the plugin just fine. Now, if a new version of the plugin is released and compiled using SDK 2.0.0, that version won’t be loaded on SAMSON 1.7.8. Instead, SAMSON keeps using the last compatible plugin version — here, 1.6.4.
This behavior protects users from trying to run Extensions that might depend on functions not yet available in their SAMSON version. It’s safe, even if sometimes confusing.
What Can You Do?
As a user, the solution is simple: keep SAMSON up to date. SAMSON offers automatic updates both for itself and for Extensions from SAMSON Connect. Staying on the latest version ensures maximum compatibility and access to new features.
As a developer, you can:
- Check the current SAMSON version (internal version and public name).
- Build and publish your Extensions with a compatible SDK version.
- Maintain older plugin versions for users who haven’t yet upgraded SAMSON.
Helpful Tip 🧪
You can find out which SDK version was used to build a given Extension. Make this visible in your plugin description to help users understand whether they need to upgrade SAMSON to run it.
For example, if your Extension uses SDK version 1.8.5, and a user has SAMSON 1.7.8, let them know they need to upgrade to a 1.8.x version of SAMSON to use the newest features.
Learn more in the official documentation.
SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON from SAMSON Connect.