Re: Version numbering

[Bernd Jendrissek]

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On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 09:33:29AM +0200, Alexandre Duret-Lutz wrote:
> Obviously, as long as characters are reserved for beta releases,
                                                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> we may not care about such installation tools.  After all the
> real releases are easy to sort since they use only digit.
> As far as explaining the new scheme is concerned, I claim that
> it's easier to do if it works with `ls -v'.

Zack Weinberg seems to have spent a lot of thought on version numbering:

http://www.panix.com/~zackw/exbib/2002/June/20

> In the past, people have also argued that using characters was
> making it more difficult for tools to sort the versions.  If you
> agree you might as well switch to the blessed FSF way of making
> beta releases (using .90, .91, .92, etc.).  Texinfo and

 From zw's page:

Now, some of the numerous ways to do it wrong:
...
7. The  GNU  maintainer  advice for test releases has an especially
   pernicious suggestion, to use 4.5.90, 4.5.91, ... for test releases
   up to 4.6; not only does this clash with the namespace of patchlevel
   releases (what if there really were 90  patchlevels to  4.5?)  but
   it  continues  by suggesting that the sequel to 4.5.99, if you're not
   done, should be 4.5.990, which is just plain wrong. See above about
   version numbers not being decimal fractions. Taking this advice is a
   common error.

> Coreutils switched to it recently.  I don't really like it
> because I think it's horrible with branches and is less obvious
> than characters (I really like these extra characters).
> 
> A scheme which I think would be compatible with Gary's will
> (maybe this is what he proposed, I simply did not understand
> whether he wanted to jump from 1.7d down to 1.7 or up to 1.8).
> 
>     1.6 (release)
>     1.7a (CVS), 
>     1.7b (beta), 
>     1.7c (CVS), 
>     1.7d (beta), 
>     1.8 (release)
> on the branch:
>     1.8.1a (CVS)
>     1.8.1b (beta)
>     1.8.2 (release)
> 
> etc.  Keeping odd version for development ensure people cannot
> mis-sort versions with letters with others. It could also gives
> some feeling of sense to accustomed to the odd/even version
> numbering scheme of Linux.

Besides the Linux kernel, what *else* uses that odd/even numbering
scheme?  I have seen a couple, but I can't remember any now.

bernd
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