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Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 14:27:31 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ask Bjoern Hansen <ask@develooper.com>
To: dev@httpd.apache.org, Justin Erenkrantz <jerenkrantz@apache.org>
Subject: Re: Concerns about suggested version strategy
In-Reply-To: <2147483647.1034936575@[10.0.1.9]>
Message-ID: <20021018134635.A68992-100000@miette.develooper.com>
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On Fri, 18 Oct 2002, Justin Erenkrantz wrote:

> > All even numbered releases will be considered stable revisions.
>
[...]
> 1.99 series to do development for 2.0.  (What is Perl doing for 6.0
> development?)

To answer your question first: For mod_perl we are using
1.99_[patchlevel] for the development releases leading to mod_perl
2.x.  I don't think there are any plans for using the odd/even
scheme for mod_perl.


With Perl it's a bit different;

Perl6 is an entire rewrite, so it doesn't really count.

We only started using the odd numbers for development releases with
perl 5.6; previously to that the versioning scheme was
[major]_[minor]_[patch_level].  The last version of perl 5.5.x was
called 5.005_03.

Back then we used patch level 50+ for development releases; so perl
5.005_50 was the first development release leading to 5.6.0 (which
would have been 5.006 in the old scheme.

Of course major has not changed for 5 years (this Thursday IIRC!),
so it got a bit silly; hence the change to using the
major.minor.patch which really should be treated more like
5.major.minor.  :-)

> Regardless of what Linux or Perl do, I think there is a real problem
> with having stable be even and odd be development.  (We could treat
> zero as odd, but then we have 0, 1 as both odd - ick.  So, zero is
> traditionally even in our context.)  So, I'd much prefer that we
> stick with OtherBill's initial suggestion - it makes it easier for us
> to do development on new major numbers.  The first odd release (0 !=
> odd) is a stable release.  It just makes more sense.

I don't think it makes sense at all.  Lots of software is unstable
in the .0 release, but I never heard of it being that way
intentionally.  And we try to be better than the rest, no?  :-)

> I'd also like to quantify what a major number bump means.  My guess
> would be, "Brand new architecture in httpd X.  You have no hope of
> porting your X-1 modules.  Don't even try."

+1 to that.

(of course with mod_perl we have a compatibility API, so most old
modules will actually work :-) )

[...]
> Let's say someone did an auth rewrite and it lived for a long time in
> -development.  I don't think there are any grounds for keeping it out
> of -stable.  Everything in -development must be there with the
> knowledge that it should be included in the next -stable release.

Yes!  Otherwise it doesn't make any sense.


  - ask (bikeshedding away)

-- 
ask bjoern hansen, http://www.askbjoernhansen.com/ !try; do();