Re: Debian versioning scheme (r1 vs .1)

[Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org>]

On Tue, Nov 05, 2002 at 12:55:47PM +0100, Emile van Bergen wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 05, 2002 at 06:30:33AM -0500, Michael Stone wrote:
> > 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.

But we don't have any such steps. Hence "completely arbitrary". 

> 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").

I'll let you in on a secret--there are major changes with *every* new
debian release, and you should *always* upgrade, because we don't have
the resources to support old releases indefinately.

Mike Stone