What is considered minimum version of zsh?

What is considered minimum version of zsh?

[zzapper]

Hi
I was using I believe version v4.2.6 on Centos 5 and found that some 
essential feature was missing. Yum didnt have an upgrade . In the end it 
was easy enough to download a newer version and Make it.

But if you cant have the latest version what is your minimum version?


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zzapper
https://twitter.com/dailyzshtip

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Re: What is considered minimum version of zsh?

[Marko Vihoma]

Hello,

For one, i don't think there's a minimum version, as it's where you have 
the features you need.

I'd say 5.0.2 (that's what's on Ubuntu 14.0.4) :p
Well, i've built 5.0.7 already here for my Ubuntu...

On 24.10.2014 14:05, zzapper wrote:
> Hi
> I was using I believe version v4.2.6 on Centos 5 and found that some
> essential feature was missing. Yum didnt have an upgrade . In the end it
> was easy enough to download a newer version and Make it.
>
> But if you cant have the latest version what is your minimum version?
>
>

-- 
If I can't smoke and swear I'm fucked!

Re: What is considered minimum version of zsh?

[Peter Stephenson]

On Fri, 24 Oct 2014 11:05:22 +0000 (UTC)
zzapper <david@rayninfo.co.uk> wrote:
> I was using I believe version v4.2.6 on Centos 5 and found that some 
> essential feature was missing. Yum didnt have an upgrade . In the end it 
> was easy enough to download a newer version and Make it.
> 
> But if you cant have the latest version what is your minimum version?

This is a meaningless question --- you can only ask what is the minimum
version for some particular feature, and you haven't said what that is.

All the previous versions of zsh still work as well as they ever did,
the question is what you want to do with them.

I would think many people consider the new completion system a minimum.
To have that reasonably reliable I'd probably want the 4.2 series.  But
you say you've already got that.

pws

Re: What is considered minimum version of zsh?

[Clint Hepner]

That depends entirely on your requirements. The idea of a minimum version only applies to dependencies, where product A requires version X or later of product B to work properly. In this scenario, *you* are product A; nobody else can say what version of zsh you require to function properly. 

--
Clint

> On Oct 24, 2014, at 7:05 AM, zzapper <david@rayninfo.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> Hi
> I was using I believe version v4.2.6 on Centos 5 and found that some 
> essential feature was missing. Yum didnt have an upgrade . In the end it 
> was easy enough to download a newer version and Make it.
> 
> But if you cant have the latest version what is your minimum version?
> 
> 
> -- 
> zzapper
> https://twitter.com/dailyzshtip
> 
> ---
> This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.
> http://www.avast.com
> 
> 

Re: What is considered minimum version of zsh?

[Phil Pennock]

On 2014-10-24 at 11:05 +0000, zzapper wrote:
> I was using I believe version v4.2.6 on Centos 5 and found that some 
> essential feature was missing. Yum didnt have an upgrade . In the end it 
> was easy enough to download a newer version and Make it.
> 
> But if you cant have the latest version what is your minimum version?

Others have noted that this is difficult to interpret meaningfully.

You probably want to:

  autoload +X is-at-least

which will let you do things like:

  is-at-least 4.3.7 && zmodload -mF zsh/files 'b:zf_*'
  is-at-least 4.3.6 && zmodload -ab -i zsh/stat zstat

After that, you can craft startup files to be somewhat portable.

Somewhere in the middle of the 4.3.x series (.5, .6?) zsh started being
usable as /bin/sh on various Linux systems, because we added features
like =~ and added flags to pre-command modifiers, to improve
compatibility with people ssh'ing into boxes and making shell
assumptions.

The zsh maintainers moved to 5.0.x as a numbering scheme to make a
public statement that this is the _stable_ branch of the shell, where
4.3, technically a development branch, had been in fact the stable
bug-fixed branch.

Either you can control the versions of the software available on all
affected systems, so can make sure you're as up-to-date as you need; or
you can't, and the question is meaningless because you have to work with
what you have.  The only middle-ground here is if you're trying to argue
that someone else should be doing work to upgrade, to your benefit.  In
that scenario, I recommend either making sure you're using version
guards such as is-at-least or learning about compiled programming
languages, where you have far fewer issues with run-time dependencies.

-Phil