Re: Release Policy [was: Linux 2.4.16 ]

[Gregory Maxwell <greg@linuxpower.cx>]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2001 at 10:31:41AM -0800, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Consistency is a Very Good Thing[TM] (says the one who tries to teach
> scripts to understand the naming.)  The advantage with the -rc naming is
> that it avoids the -pre5, -pre6, -pre-final, -pre-final-really,
> -pre-final-really-i-mean-it-this-time phenomenon when the release
> candidate wasn't quite worthy, you just go -rc1, -rc2, -rc3.  There is no
> shame in needing more than one release candidate.

Why not just disguard this sillyness of alphabetic characters in version
numbers... Just carry through the same structure used by major/minor:
I.e.

2.0.39 < released 2.0.39
2.0.39.1.1 < first development snapshot of the kernel which will eventually
	     be 2.0.40
2.0.39.1.2 < second
2.0.39.1.n < Nth
2.0.39.2.1 < first RC
2.0.39.2.2 < second RC
2.0.39.3.1 < opps! Development went too long and we had to break feature
	     freeze to add important features.
2.0.39.4.1 < Trying to stablize again
2.0.39.4.2 < a few more bugs fixxed
2.0.40	   < Looks like 2.0.39.4.2 got it right!