Re: [Gnu-arch-users] What are version numbers?

[Tom Lord]

    > From: Zack Brown <address@hidden>

    > It's starting to make sense now. It seems like you really do intend
    > there to be a clear relationship between the project version number, and
    > the tla version number. It's just that the tla version number refers to
    > a whole sweep of project version numbers. So tla version 1.0 would
    > contain project versions 1.0.1, 1.0.2, etc.


Yes.

Something else that comes into play here, which I've used in the past
but don't happen to recently, are the `--seal' and `--fix' options to
commit.   So you could, if you wanted, have the convention that:


        project--mainline--X.Y--version-0

(created with --seal) corresponds to release:

        project-X.Y

and:

        project--mainline--X.Y--versionfix-Z

(created with --fix) corresponds to release:

        project-X.Y.Z


But there's way too much flexability in the system to require that
isomorphism.   You can use config names to map from release names to
versions.   You can use N-component version numbers.  You can throw
tags into the mix...

It's a cataloging system, as in what libraries use (but sans the
dictionary of pre-defined terms which, currently, would at most
contain the keyword "devo" when used as a branch label).  As a
cataloging system -- it just goes half-way from "unstructured" to
"cataloged", relying on a cultural context to evolve and meet it
halfway.

Ask me about how I'd do a GNU/linux distribution using arch sometime.
(And, for a most-likely-dissenting opinion, ask asuffield.)   The
issue I mean is: how to make thousands of separately developed
packages managable en-masse with the smallest amount of labor and the
largest amount of power.

-t