On Sun, Jun 08, 2003 at 01:17:42AM +1200, Jonathan wrote: > I'm not quite sure how to broach this subject, but seeing as other equally > philosophical subjects were recently discussed, it seems like a good time. > > Would version numbers be a good way to identify ion releases?
I don't think the usual x.y.z version numbers are that good in conveying any extra information as they depend on the app in question. In addition I'm too lazy to decide when to increment which part of the version number, except the first. (But e.g. in Linux kernel major release information is split between x and y.) ISO dates are an automatic scheme that you don't need to worry about, although convey no extra information at all. A good scheme might be something like XrcN for development releases and XpN for patches to major releases. Here X is some major milestone identifier _and_ API version number in case of libraries and such (API could change between rc:s, though) and N either a date or a number that is incremented with each release (and reset when moving from rc to p). Using such a scheme the current stable Ion would be 1p20020207 and the development release 2rc20030606. (Maybe 'rc' could be split into 'd' for snapshots and 'rc' for frozen code that is soon to go 'p'.) -- Tuomo
