Re: Why does Debian have code names for releases?
On Sat 01 Jul 2023 at 18:00:01 (+0200), Roger Price wrote:
> On Sat, 1 Jul 2023, David Wright wrote:
>
> > Unlike numbers, names are memorable and unambiguous (when well-chosen).
>
> This claim is far from evident and needs justification. The only
> example I can think of is project number 401 which later became the
> product "Titanic". However the name is not memorable in itself: what
> we remember is the maritime disaster.
Leaving aside that Titanic is the real name of the ship and not a
codename, the evidence is all around you. Look no further than
your login name, or the name of your computer. A huge slice of the
Internet's infrastructure, DNS, is concerned with allowing people
to converse with memorable names rather than anonymous numbers.
Going back to your OP, the idea of using a purported Release Number
before release is a recipe for confusion, because people may mistake
it for an actual release before that actually happens. (The way in
which the Debian project is organised is unlikely to result in one
event that sometimes occurs elsewhere: where a distribution is partly
built but abandoned, and a new one started under a fresh codename.
Think MS's Cairo.)
Moving on to ambiguity, any conversation about Debian is going to
involve numbers: dates, version numbers, literal values, addresses,
ports, enumerations, etc. Numbers have to be in a context, which tells
you what sort of number it is. OTOH, with a codename like bookworm,
the context of the list, forum, or whatever, is enough for you to
know what it stands for. And it's "well-chosen" when it's a word
unlikely to occur with a different meaning, and doesn't carry any
misleading implications about the nature of the project, including
release dates.
Cheers,
David.
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