Re: bug#13578: [IMPORTANT] A new versioning scheme for automake releases, and a new branching scheme for the Git repository

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2013 12 Feb 03:08 -0600, Vincent Torri wrote:
> in our project, we append _beta and _rc (or _rc1, _rc2 etc...) for
> beta and release candidate. It's sufficiently explicit. For example,
> 1.14.0_beta

I was advised by a Debian maintainer to use tilde '~' as the separator
as any text following it will be considered "older".  For example, in
our project 'Hamlib-3.0~git' is "older" than 'Hamlib-3.0' will be once
released.  A hyphen or underscore trips this logic up, as I understand
it, for both .deb and .rpm formats.  While this is good practice from a
package mainter's POV, it has not been a problem as we ask that such
code not be packaged by distributions.  The extra text is a human
convenience add-on.

Also, the practice of using the "prior" released version number as the
base for the next version's beta is a bit confusing to me.  The Linux
kernel model of the *next* planned release tagged with an additional
"rc1", "beta", "git", what-have-you always seemed more logical to me, at
least.  Our project adopted this approach of versioning of base +1
(always arbitrary) for the next planned released so that beta testers
and developers are well aware of the next planned version and that
additional characters following a '~' means a yet to be released version.

In other words, 1.14~git, 1.14~beta, 1.14~rc1, make more sense to me for
the forthcoming 1.14 release than using 1.13+whatever which magically
is promoted to 1.14 upon release.  JMHO.

- Nate

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