usethis supports semantic versioning, which is described in more detail in the version section of R Packages. A version number breaks down like so:
<major>.<minor>.<patch> (released version)
<major>.<minor>.<patch>.<dev> (dev version)use_version() increments the "Version" field in DESCRIPTION, adds a new
heading to NEWS.md (if it exists), and commits those changes (if package
uses Git). It makes the same update to a line like PKG_version = "x.y.z";
in src/version.c (if it exists).
use_dev_version() increments to a development version, e.g. from 1.0.0 to
1.0.0.9000. If the existing version is already a development version with
four components, it does nothing. Thin wrapper around use_version().
use_version(which = NULL)
use_dev_version()A string specifying which level to increment, one of: "major",
"minor", "patch", "dev". If NULL, user can choose interactively.
The version section of R Packages.
if (FALSE) {
## for interactive selection, do this:
use_version()
## request a specific type of increment
use_version("minor")
use_dev_version()
}