This CR includes
     - Introducing a proto message for encapsulating the version
       and metadata for persisting both in the ~version field
     - Enhancement to the encoding/decoding so as to handle both
       the old and new format of encoding of the ~version field

Change-Id: Ica55f7af1206deeee4d93ae89d9a9045b30a8d26
Signed-off-by: manish <manish.sethi@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Matthias Neugschwandtner <eug@zurich.ibm.com>