Re: version numbering

Greg Hudson wrote:

> But unless we change this number with every commit, such a version
> number would be vague at best and deceptive at worst. A user reports
> that their "svn --version" says 1.1.13, but it's not actually the 1.1.13
> tarball we put out, but a similar version on the trunk.

This is actually why Perl has a "Locally Applied Patches" section of 'perl -V'
so that the actual patch number that the Perl was built from can be reported.

> $ ./perl -v
>
> This is perl, v5.9.0 built for i686-linux
> (with 1 registered patch, see perl -V for more detail)

versus

> $ ./perl -Ilib -V
> Summary of my perl5 (revision 5.0 version 9 subversion 0 patch 20173) configuration:

I second/third the recommendation that 'svn --version' report a version based on
what branch it was released from. "official releases" (which always come from a
branch) will report a version soley based on the branch they were released from
and svn releases from the trunk will display the revision number in addition to
the version number.

> This argument seems especially specious. Why is the difference between
> Linux 2.4 and Linux 2.6 inherently any larger than the diference between
> Mozilla 1.5 and Mozilla 1.6?

Because that is what the developers of each project have specified. The Linux
developers mandate that 2.4 and 2.6 are two different release generations.
Similarly, Mozilla 1.5 and 1.6 are defined by their development team as two
minor releases in the same generation.

John

-- 
John Peacock
Director of Information Research and Technology
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group
4501 Forbes Boulevard
Suite H
Lanham, MD  20706
301-459-3366 x.5010
fax 301-429-5748
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