On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 10:45:30AM -0500, Daniel P. Nugent wrote:
> I was able to make the connection between a book's edition and
> "print run" identification as similar to the idea of "semantic
> versioning" in software.

Book editions seem very similar to generic versioning.  But Semantic
Versioning is a much more specific thing, involving a very specific
numbering scheme and backwards/forwards compatibility assertions on
the versioned API [1].  I expect you were just trying to highlight the
utility of grouping at all:

> In the end, the goal is to be able to distinguish a specific
> instance from any other instances that may exist and yet to retain
> some concept of the instances relationship to other instances.

which is certainly helpful, even if the encoded relationships are less
formal than SemVer's.

I think trying to extend the analogy to use editions and print runs as
major/minor versions or some such is probably starting to reach the
limits of the book analogy (do you even require changes between print
runs?  Or do you just assume that pre-digital printing will introduce
changes whether you intended them or not?).  And even if you draw the
right connections, the finer points are probably going to be lost on
folks hitting version control for the first time ;).  So I'd just
stick with book editions / child names / … and call it a day ;).

Since I like the camera/snapshot analogy for version control (previous
version control analogy discussion in [2,3,4]), I think a version
analogy that ties into that would be appealing.  But I haven't come up
with anything that gets naming/numbering snapshots across without
feeling forced.

Cheers,
Trevor

[1]: http://semver.org/
[2]: https://github.com/swcarpentry/git-novice/pull/109
[3]: https://github.com/swcarpentry/git-novice/issues/149
[4]: https://github.com/swcarpentry/git-novice/pull/150

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