versioning & release schedule

Ethan (allanon@crystaltokyo.com)
Fri, 11 Dec 1998 13:44:44 -0800 (PST)



Okay, looks like there's some disagreement on this.  Here's my take on 
it.

Versioning:

Any system that gets the job done is fine by me.  I want the version to 
tell me what version comes before what.  If we have two trees, I want 
to be able to distinguish them easily.  Anything else is negotiable. :)

I know there are also some concerns over user misapprehensions, like 
mistaking a 1.7 tree as stable because it doesn't contain "beta".  What 
do you all think?

Release schedule:

For the stable tree, it seems best to keep the number of new versions to 
a minimum, and make sure that the user doesn't have to do any patching.  
The question is, then, what do we release, and when?

Since there shouldn't be many patches, I suggest we release a new version 
whenever we have a new patch, increment the patchlevel (1.6.x, x == 
patchlevel), and make a tarball of the new version available on f.a.o, as 
well as the patch.  Since the tarballs take a lot of space, I also suggest 
we remove intermediate versions.  ie, keep 1.6.0 and the latest 1.6.x, and 
remove 1.6.1, 1.6.2, ..., 1.6.(x - 1).

For the devel tree, at least until we get CVS, patches should be fine, 
with a release schedule somewhat like we've been doing with the betaX's.

----
Ethan Fischer
allanon@crystaltokyo.com
http://members.xoom.com/allanon1