Re: Release/branch naming; input requested

["Jim Schutt" <jaschut@sandia.gov>]

On 04/26/2012 06:09 PM, Tommi Virtanen wrote:
> Now, here are my actual questions:
>
> 1. What should the "relative" names of the branches be? "stable" vs
> "latest" etc. I especially don't like "integration", but I do see a
> time where it is not ready for "stable" but still needs to branch off
> of "latest".
>
> 2. Do we want to use cutesy codenames? Alphabetical? Based on what theme?
>
> 3. Do we want to use calendar based names? "I'm using Ceph branch
> 2012.04"? (Or spell it 2012-04 to avoid confusing with 0.41 style
> versions?)
>
> 3. What do we do with version numbers? With a 2-3 week iteration,
> we'll end up with something like 0.41.x, 0.56.x for Folsom integration
> (less than a year from now), and 0.57, 0.58 etc for "latest".
>
> 4. What will be worthy of 1.0? Is it when the distributed file system
> is solid? Getting out of 0.x would help with separating the different
> branches based on major numbers, but I fear that window has closed
> already.
>
>
> Your input is welcome.

FWIW, I think the current Linux kernel versioning scheme should be
considered.  In particular I like that for the most part new features
don't get back-ported to stable series kernels; if you want new
features you need to upgrade.

If you haven't seen it, https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/4/11/779
has a good discussion of issues the kernel versioning attempts
to address.

I think names are cute but essentially useless - what I want
from an identification scheme is to tell at a glance that
"a" is likely to be better than "b".  Numeric "a" and "b" where
a > b does that for me; names don't.

Also FWIW, don't get hung up on 1.0.  Instead, borrow again from
kernel experience - what is needed is careful selection of the
versions that get long-term support.

If you haven't seen it, https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/8/15/5
has a good discussion of longterm kernel support.

-- Jim