Re: Version numbers of unreleased stable and development versions

[Didier Verna <didier@xemacs.org>]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:

> On Mon, May 28 2007, Didier Verna wrote:
>
>> Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:
>>
>>> Releases (beta and devel) from Gnus repository and CVS versions:
>>>
>>> ,-----------------------------------------------------------------------.
>>> | Standalone | CVS     || No Gnus | CVS   | Date / notes                 |
>>> | Gnus vers. | v5-10   ||         | trunk |                              |
>>> | beta rel.  |         || devel   |       |                              |
>>> |------------|---------||---------|-------|------------------------------|
>>> |            | 5.10.8  ||         |       |                              |
>>> |            |         || 0.6     |       | 2007-05-01                   |
>>> |            | 5.10.8  ||         | 0.7   | today                        |
>>> | 5.10.9     |         || 0.9     |       | close to release of Emacs 22 |
>>> |            | 5.10.10 ||         | 0.10  |                              |
>>> | 5.10.11    |         || 0.11    |       | ?                            |
>>> |            | 5.10.12 ||         | 0.12  |                              |
>>> | 5.10.13    |         || 0.13    |       |                              |
>>> |            | 5.10.13 ||         | 0.14  |                              |
>>> `------------------------------------------------------------------------'
>>
>>         My .02: I've never understood why people like this kind of
>> numbering scheme. I find them so confusing and inconsistent (John uses
>> odd/even, Jack uses even/odd, you never know which one is what etc).
>
> One of the major points for this discussion was to distinguish CVS
> versions and released version.  Now, if a user has "5.10.8" you can't
> tell if its from 2006-04-11 or 2007-05-28, i.e. it's unclear which
> bugs should already be fixed in this version.

        We should have CVS tags in all files. But if you really want to
give explicit versions to CVS intermediate, then you can use a timestamp.


> Upto now we had/have:
>
> - final = in Emacs = { 5.9, 5.11, 5.13, ... } 
>
> - beta = standalone release = { 5.8.x, 5.10.x, ... }
>
> - development = (prefixed named versions = ) = { Oort Gnus 0.y, No
>   Gnus 0.y, ...)
>
> How do you suggest to apply your scheme to these Gnus versions (i.e. 
> fill the table from my message with your suggested version numbers)?

        Thanks for this table. I'm actually beginning to understand the
Gnus version numbering scheme now that we're about to change it ;-) I
can't quite answer your question because I still don't understand the
relation between No Gnus and Gnus 5.10.*. Perhaps I would, if the table
was presented as a graph of CVS branches. Besides, your table lacks any
stable realease of Gnus (I know, Gnus is never stable ;-).

But if this table means that we actually have *two* development branches
in parallel (the 5.10 and the trunk), then that's not the numbering
scheme which is broken; it's the development process ! (again, I'm not
quite sure but I fear this has something to do with GNU Emacs people
committing changes to Gnus in the GNU Emacs repository instead of the
Gnus CVS archive)


So here's a partial answer, assuming the next release of Gnus would be
6.0: the *only* place where development in beta stage occurs (or should
occur) could be numbered as:

Gnus 6.0 beta 1 cvs 2007-08-01
                    2007-08-02
                    ..........

Gnus 6.0 beta 1                 => Tagged beta release

Gnus 6.0 beta 2 cvs 2007-09-01
                    2007-09-02
                    ..........
Gnus 6.0 beta 2                 => Tagged beta release

[ etc ]

Gnus 6.0                        => Tagged stable release


And then, the trunk goes to Gnus 6.1 beta 1 cvs blabla, while the 6.0
branch occasionally gets bugfixes and goes Gnus 6.0.1 etc.



Now I'm waiting to see the light about this mysterious 5.10 ghost...


-- 
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Didier Verna, didier@lrde.epita.fr, http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier

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