Re: 1.0 on Infomagic CD
Fernando Alegre writes:
>On Fri, 8 Dec 1995, Bruce Perens wrote:
>>We can't put stuff like this where just anybody can download it any
>>longer. Especially, we can't do that and call it "1.0". This isn't
>>entirely Infomagic's fault, in my opinion.
>
>I suggested some time ago to call the directories:
>
>release-0.93/
>not-released-1.0/
>
>Maybe it was not such a bad idea...
If I might just stick my oar in on this one:
As I understand it, mirrors have some trouble with directories
changing names; so what we really want is a solution that keeps
directory names fixed. The suggestion below suffers here in that when
1.0 is declared to be released, the directory has to change name from
not-released-1.0 to release-1.0.
This could be solved with a symlink, obviously, but that still leaves
a directory called `not-released-1.0' containing released software,
which may be felt to be suboptimal.
A common practice is to give unreleased products code names.
(Remember Cairo, Daytona, etc...?) If we were to adopt this scheme
then the unreleased software would just be a directory with a
non-obvious name; each release would have a symlink containing the
version number added when it was actually released.
If the 0.93R6/1.0 situation were handled like this we'd have, before
the release:
0.93R6 -> Highgate
Highgate/ [contains 0.93R6]
Holborn/ [contains what will be 1.0]
and after the release:
0.93R6 -> Highgate
Highgate/ [contains 0.93R6]
1.0 -> Holborn
Holborn/ [contains 1.0]
No renaming needed, no misleading filenames ... to find out what
Highgate and Holborn were without going through symlinks you'd have to
read a README which would also warn you about installing unreleased
software.
This idea went down quite well when discussed off-line last night -
what does anyone else think?
--
Richard Kettlewell richard@uk.geeks.org http://www.elmail.co.uk/staff/richard/
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