Re: Stable branch releases

[Dirk Herrmann]

On Mon, 12 Mar 2001, Mikael Djurfeldt wrote:

> I suggest that we split development into a stable and unstable branch
> in the CVS repository.  We can, for example, have the development
> version as the trunk and fork off the stable branch for each main
> release.  I further suggest to give Rob Browning write access to CVS
> and appoint him "stable release manager"---let him do the releases.
> 
> Maybe we should also extend the current version numbering scheme so
> that the stable branch as an even second number?  (How should this
> work together with the current third digit convention?  We have to do
> something.  What?)

IMO, it is a good move to split development.  Following the linux
versioning style is also a good idea.  However, I don't quite understand
what you mean with 'the current third digit convention'?

If we just take the well-established and AFAIK proven to be useful
versioning scheme from the linux kernel, we had the following:

Stable releases:

1.4.0   This is the current 1.4 release.
1.4.1   This is the 1.4 release with some bugs fixed.
        (Well, the current CVS version also reports this number.
         Since it has never been official, we could also just go
         ahead and switch it over to 1.5.0.)
1.4.2   etc.  Further bug fix releases.

Unstable releaes:

1.5.0   This will be the first of a number of unstable release - for those
        that are adventureous but don't like to follow CVS development.
1.5.1   later development snapshots.
1.5.2   ...

Maybe we should, as long as no official release has been made, tag the CVS
versions with some postfix, like 1.5.0-pre, such that people always know
that they are working with some 'in-between' version.  That means, the
very moment some 1.4.1 version is released, the corresponding branch
switches over to 1.4.2-pre.

Best regards,
Dirk Herrmann