[dev] Release Engineering: Versions

[Tim Gorter]

Friday, December 12, 2003, 9:55:34 PM, Eric Rostetter wrote:
ER> Quoting Tim Gorter <email at teletechnics.com>:

>> consolidate the release numbers so that it seems more logical that
>> version 5 of one thing should work with version 5 of another thing. So

ER> Which is why I run Windows XP with Office 2000 with Encarta 99 and
ER> IE 6.0?  Confusing?  Well, sometime MS uses the year, other times a
ER> name, sometime a number.  Now that's confusing.  But there is no need

True but the software mentioned above are independent programs that
also totally run by themselves, where here we are talking about
modules that are dependant on a framework. (Umm, also just heard that
MS is going back to year for Office...)

>> all modules in RELENG_2 should work with all other related RELENG_2
>> releases. Hey, and if a RELENG_3 module works with a RELENG_2 Horde,
>> lucky module!!

ER> So if we release a new module for Horde 4.x, then it must be called
ER> something 4.x.  Now the poor user using Horde 3.x will write in "where
ER> is version 1/2/3 of module something?  I can't find them anywhere!"
ER> Or they will say "for version 4 of something you think it would be more
ER> stable/mature/feature-rich!  It must have been around for a long time
ER> to have 4 versions out, so the bugs should be fixed by now!".

Uh, I'm sure MS Windows still has quite a few bugs by the updates that
it gets often enough, even though it has been around for a very long
time. And I think also that the separate parts of MS Office (word,
excel..) are one of those that had their version numbers consolidated
along the line sometime ago, to create that grouped package.

ER> Because, while I'm not against that, I don't think it will decrease the
ER> number of questions we get.  Heck, we get minor version questions still
ER> "I'm running Horde 2.2.3 and IMP 3.1.  I want to upgrade to IMP 3.2.
ER> Do I need to upgrade Horde to 2.2.4 to do that?"

Do those questions stem from people of the days when IMP and Horde had
to be similar in minor upgrades?

>> The name is okay for me RELENG - RELease ENGineering - right? HEAD
>> isn't RELENG, could be called something else like DEVelopment (like
>> the list name..), but I like HEAD too.

ER> But most people don't know what HEAD is.  I think we cause more problems
ER> independent of the naming scheme.  For example, our snapshots are called
ER> (IIRC) module-date.tar.gz and module-RELENG-date.tar.gz which causes
ER> confusion.  They should be something more like module-HEAD-date.tar.gz
ER> and module-RELENG-date.tar.gz or similar.

That is why I did suggest DEV for DEVelopment, and I agree with you on
the file naming.

cheers,
tim.