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Re: Mirrors et al.



Lars Wirzenius wrote:

> A work on version numbers.  A YYYYMMDD (or possibly YYYY-NN, where NN is
> a sequence number within a year) number is logical, and pretty easy.
> However, the 1.1 kind of scheme, if used properly, makes it easier to
> see when there have been large changes.  The move from 0.93 to 1.1 is
> big -- because of ELF.  Later, similar moves might be made again.
> For example, when multi-architecture support is included, we might move
> from 1.x to 2.0.  
> 
> But this is a minor issue.

Well, maybe not so minor. It's a good point. (pun intended)

The convention of point releases and major/minor version numbers is
pretty well standard across all software and operating systems. 
I might upgrade from 1.1 to 1.1.1 or 1.2 without first looking at what's new.
Not so with 1.x to 2.x.

The date stamps loose all this information. I can't tell you _when_
DOS 2.0 or DOS 4.0 were released, or Win3.1 or JES3 or QEMM6 or Solaris 2.4,
etc. But I sure remember the significance of all these. 

I'd sure vote for the "standard" major/minor version numbers. I see no
advantages of the date methods. The dates are meaningless over time.

-- 
...RickM...


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