Hi,
On Tue, Nov 05, 2002 at 06:30:33AM -0500, Michael Stone wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 02:15:38PM -0500, martin f krafft wrote:
> >I think if Debian releases 4.0 after 3.0r6 or whatever,
>
> We shouldn't release 4.0, we should release 4. And the next one should
> be 5, and then 6. The minor number is absolutely meaningless and should
> be abandoned. For other distributions it might have a meaning (e.g.,
> redhat tends to support security only for the final minor number in the
> last major series--but our minors are completely arbitrary and have no
> such encoded meaning.)
Well, as long as the scheme is used, there's at least the freedom to
indicate smaller or larger steps of progress among releases.
This may have no meaning for computers, but it may have for humans
("Let's see now, Debian has released a version with a new major number,
there should be quite some changes. I'm curious, maybe I should give it
another try").
> >then we will lose credibility
>
> That's ridiculous. We should not cater to anyone foolish enough to think
> a version number means anything.
It may not have a solid, concrete definition, but even in Debian's case,
incrementing the major or minor version may convey some information in
the communication between developers and users.
Even if the meaning of bumping the minor instead of the major version
number is limited to saying "this is a smaller change than one that we'd
bump the major number for", you'd loose that bit of information if you
abandon it. I don't see any compelling reason to do that.
There's been a lot of complaint, but I really don't think Debian's
version numbering it's that bad, I even think it makes sense. I also
like the 'r', it makes it clear that it's the same thing, really the
same thing, just a new [r]evision of it, with some bugfixes.
Cheers,
Emile.
--
E-Advies / Emile van Bergen | emile@e-advies.info
tel. +31 (0)70 3906153 | http://www.e-advies.info
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