Handling versioning for marketplace apps: Marketplace version versus apiVersion from app descriptor

[Craeg Strong]

This is about app versioning for marketplace jira apps

when maintaining a custom app in the app marketplace, we would like to track the exact version of the app

we would like the build number to be automatically incremented every time we do a new build in the main branch

we would like to increment the major and minor version numbers according to semantic versioning standards

we would like all of this to be handled automatically, so that the app displays its version number in the GUI so we will always know if the latest version is successfully installed in our Jira instance. e.g., "1.0.107"

However, there seems to be a completely separate versioning schema that is incremented by pressing the "create version" button in the app marketplace.   This version is separate from the internal development CI/CD pipeline build number.   e.g., "1.0.3-AC build 10000003"

I can see some benefits from having a different version, since we don't always want to publish every new build.  We only want to publish in the app store after we have done exhaustive testing.  Therefore, there may be gaps in the versions that are actually published.

Nevertheless, it would be nice to synchronize the CI/CD assigned build number and the app version number.   

Does anyone have experience doing this?  Any clever strategies?   Curious how other app vendors handle the versioning issue.   Is this a problem worth worrying about?  Or maybe we just live with two altogether separate version schemes and maintain our own internal mapping forever (ick!).   All comments welcome