Quoting Justin Hopkins <[email protected]>:
Why are we so focused on the numbering scheme? I don't think the time spent worrying about what number we are on does anything to improve the project.
I pretty much agree with you. However, version numbers are important to end users and system administrators because it gives them some notion of what features are in a given release. And they can use the compatibility matrix on http://www.open-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=versioning to see what other software they need. (Granted that matrix is missing 2.3 at the moment.)
That said, if you follow the guidelines at the top of the version page, 2.1 should have been 3.0 because the required versions of PostgreSQL and OpenSRF changed, 2.2 should have been 4.0 for the same reasons, and 2.3 should be 5.0 because the xulrunner requirement has changed quite a bit.
The outcome of the discussion that Alexey refers to was to throw out the guidelines which are still posted on that page. It was decided that any version numbering scheme is no more or less arbitrary than any other, so we'll just be arbitrary and change version numbers whenever it feels right.
I disagree with that decision because I think the older scheme could actually be more useful to the end user, though it was end user "fear" that was the driving force behind the decision to increment the major version less often. It was felt by the majority of developers that users would be more reluctant to upgrade to a 3.0 release from a 2.0 rather than to a 2.1 release.
I should also clarify that the discussion was not just limited to developers. Several system administrators and users also gave their opinions. These discussion are open to anyone who wants to sign up to the dev mailing list or join us in IRC.
I suspect this is coming up because of bericks recent post about release scheduling - which I (personally) do think would improve the project.
It could be, but Bill's email is really about the monthly dot releases with bug fixes rather than about the bigger releases that now happen twice a year. It was aimed at the developers because we're the ones mostly affected by it. His email was basically a rallying cry to get us to stick to our goal of doing a bug fix release of supported versions every month. The question mainly affects the 2.2 and 2.3 release maintainers.
All of that being said, the version numbering scheme is not particularly important to me or to my institution. We run Evergreen from the master git branch and update whenever we feel it is worth it.
-- Jason Stephenson Assistant Director for Technology Services Merrimack Valley Library Consortium Chief Bug Wrangler, Evergreen ILS -- Jason Stephenson Assistant Director for Technology Services Merrimack Valley Library Consortium Chief Bug Wrangler, Evergreen ILS
