Best practice for versioning IDLs?

[George Fletcher]

Hi,

I'd like to incorporate a semver.org style versioning structure for the 
IDL files we are using. The IDLs represent interfaces of services (ala 
SOA).

We currently manage our IDL files separately from the implementation as 
multiple services might use the same IDL. This makes it critical to have 
the IDL's understand their version. I'd like to see our build process be 
able to inject into the IDL the version from the build environment 
(currently maven). Another option would be to define the version within 
the IDL. However, the only way I can think of to do this, is to create a 
"Version" Record within each IDL and then maybe have the Record contains 
3 string fields (major, minor, patch).

Just wondering if there are any best practices already established for 
this kind of IDL versioning.

Thanks,
George