Re: [boost] Release numbering

Subject: Re: [boost] Release numbering
From: Rob Stewart (robertstewart_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-12-16 18:38:18

On Dec 16, 2013, at 1:24 PM, Stefan Seefeld <stefan_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> My main concern with the current numbering scheme is that the current 'major' number is entirely meaningless. There is absolutely no concern for compatibility between releases 1.X and 1.(X+1), so making a
> distinction between 'major' and 'minor' seems a little pointless.

You make an excellent point, but a future release that forgoes C++98/03 altogether, would certainly warrant a major version number bump. However, if we can't agree on such a break a priori, I suspect it won't happen. If we agree to take that direction, then using 2.x to indicate modularization, or even just the Git transition, isn't out of the question.

> Thus I think that a switch to 2.0 would reinforce a notion of a metric that doesn't exist.

Maybe not, after all.

> Thus, I'm still thinking that the best change in numbering would be to remove the '1.' prefix (and it really is nothing but a common prefix !), and continue to number with a 'flat' scheme N, N+1, N+2, ...
> 
> So, the next version would be 56, not 1.56. And if there is a need for a 'minor bugfix release', that could then be captured in an exceptional 56.1 number. But please, get rid of the redundant leading '1.' !

That makes a lot of sense should we choose to skip using the major version to indicate language transitions.

___
Rob

(Sent from my portable computation engine)