Date: Sun, 17 Sep 1995 00:28:23 -0500 From: Jon Loeliger <jdl@chrome.onramp.net> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: current@FreeBSD.org Subject: Release numbering Message-ID: <199509170528.AAA14969@chrome.onramp.net> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 16 Sep 1995 18:14:10 PDT." <21442.811300450@time.cdrom.com>
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Apparently, "Jordan K. Hubbard" scribbled: > The only serious question still to be resolved is just when the > "rollover" happens? Does 2.1.x live forever, or does it get abandoned > with 2.2.x is "stable?" Personally, I think trying to maintain a strict 2.1 derived base for a very long time will become fairly problematic. You'll likely end up with the nightmare of figuring out which variant of which patch gets applied to which branches and the resulting rev interlock. Been there done that. Wasn't too much fun then either. I sort of think people have a desire to contribute to and subsequently need the "latest and greatest". I think they'd rather do development work into that and generally push the frontier there. My point being: sure bug fix 2.1 to get 2.1.1 if needed, but don't plan on it living long if 2.2 is already under way and people are actively contributing to that. How well this rolls from 2.1 to 2.2 probably depend on the gross-level development cycle time. Waiting 9~12 months for a major release is somewhat painful, especially if there's nothing in between. This is proabably what leads to the snap shot releases that people want. In fact, could we just formalize the snapshots into the series of release numbers? (Yea, I know, this was all discussed a month ago...) > Does 2.1 just become 2.3 at some point, > leaving the odd numbered releases as the "stable" ones and the even > numbered ones as "experimental?" Isn't that what the makers of the Star Trek movies decided to do? :-) Oh wait, no. The odd ones sucked and the even ones were good, right? Yea, this is probably the basic approach to take. As soon as 2.1 goes out the door, people are generally going to breath a huge sigh of relief, take a break, and then be real gung-ho about 2.2. Why not just let everyone work on 2.2 until it too gets to a reasonably stable point and then call it "stable" at the same time introduce 2.3 as the next development release. Just pipeline it, not leapfrog it? > In short, we may be digging ourselves a deep hole if we can't decide > just how this is all going to work. Agreed. jdl
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