Re: debian version 1.3.1 ?
On Wed, 8 Oct 1997, Bob wrote:
> I recently add X to my debian box. My debian version still shows 1.3
>
> Shouldn't this now read 1.3.1??
>
No. The most recent releases have been 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 while the
upcomming release is to be 2.0 (which may explain the fairly long
developement cycle for this release).
The additional ".N" represents an incremental "point release", which
constitutes changes to a small number of packages which either fix
security issues, or major flaws in the given packages.
These "point releases" scared off some vendors because their product was
guaranteed to be stale by the time it made it onto retail shelves. This
situation (whether real or only perception) has kept Debian from appearing
in retail outlets, like computer stores and book stores.
To satisfy these concerns (because they impact "availability" of product
to our end users) it was decided to move to a "revision number" as the
method for indicating changes to the release. As usual our timing was
poor, in that the decission was implimented after the release of 1.3.1,
and on top of that, it was decided to "tack" the revision number onto the
current point release notation rather than revert to having the next
revision be 1.3-r2 (we could not decide between r1 and r2 because of the
confusion they might entail and settled on 1.3.1-r1 as the next revision
after 1.3.1, which seems to have created some confusion as well. Go
figure ;-)
So, the current version on the ftp site is 1.3.1-r4 which, when converted
to the old notation would be 1.3.5 and each of the previous rN's denote
previous minor modifications to the 1.3 release.
With the release of 2.0 (early next year, with any luck at all) the
"revision number" system will be less confusing as 2.0 will become 2.0-r1
and so on.
In addition, the 1.3 release was the first to have an "formal" attempt
made at testing. We can thank the Testing Team and all their good work for
the improved stability of 1.3 over 1.2. As a side effect of this
additional testing proceedure, (which still goes on before each
revision) the length of time between changes to the release has increased
somewhat. This has caused some confusion over whether anyone is still
working on 1.3 or not. I can assure you that, while the majority of effort
is going into 2.0, there is still work being done on 1.3. It has seemed
strange that some folks have seen this as "abandonment" rather than
"closure"...
I hope my long-winded explanation will help eliminate some of your (and
other folks as well) confusion over this transition in labeling systems.
Luck,
Dwarf
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