Re: [Xen-devel] (release) versioning

[Ian Campbell <ian.campbell@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2015-05-05 at 16:54 +0100, Jan Beulich wrote:
> All,
> 
> on the hackathon we also discussed possibly changing the versioning
> of Xen.

Sorry I missed this, I had a clash.

>  The main rationale for the proposal is that (just like in many
> other software projects) version numbers (in particular the major
> one) currently don't really convey much information. The proposal is
> to take gcc's new versioning scheme as a basis (i.e. I'm not going to
> claim that the below is an exact copy of theirs): Major releases
> always increment the major version number. Minor version 0 is
> reserved to the development cycle, i.e. the first release in any
> release series would be 5.1.0. RCs would be expressed through the
> 3rd digit, i.e. the first RC of the currently being worked on release
> would be 5.0.1 (there was some debate as to whether, despite
> being redundant, to attach -rc1 to it to make clear this is not an
> actual release).
> 
> So comparing current and new schemes things would go
> 
>       OLD                     NEW
>       4.6-unstable            5.0-unstable (or 5.0.0)
>       4.6.0-rc1                       5.0.1 (-rc1)
>       ...                     ...
>       4.6.0-rcN                       5.0.N (-rcN)
>       4.6.0                   5.1.0
>       4.6.1-rc1                       5.1.1 (-rc1)
>       ...                     ...
>       4.6.1                   5.2.0
> 
> This additionally has the benefit that taking only the numeric
> part of the version string then would sort properly.
> 
> Any comments or alternative proposals are welcome.

If we had no historical versioning schemes I'd be completely happy with
this but I'm worried that people would naturally assume 5.0.1 to mean
"first rc of 5.0" based on historical use. Perhaps that's just a
communications issue (and switching to 5.X at the same time might help).

For example I had no idea until now that gcc 5.0.1 was a prerelease and
not a proper release, but then I don't really follow gcc development.

Adding a trailing redundant -rc (with or without the N) might help, and
omitting the N (e.g. "5.0.1-rc") would reduce the redundancy to near
zero.

Was 5.0-rcN leading to a 5.0 release considered and ruled out? I suppose
it looses the benefit of the numeric portion sorting properly.

Ian.

> 
> Regards, Jan
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-devel mailing list
> Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://lists.xen.org/xen-devel



_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xen.org/xen-devel