Re: [RFC] Kernel version numbering scheme change

Thorsten Leemhuis
2008-10-16T07:30:22Z

On 16.10.2008 02:25, Greg KH wrote:
> You brought this topic up a few months ago, and passed it off as
> something we would discuss at the kernel summit. But that never
> happened, so I figured I'd bring it up again here.
>
> So, as someone who constantly is dealing with kernel version numbers all
> the time with the -stable trees, our current numbering scheme is a pain
> a times. How about this proposal instead?
>
> We number the kernel based on the year, and the numbers of releases we
> have done this year:
> YEAR.NUMBER.MINOR_RELEASE
>
> For example, the first release in 2009 would be called:
> 2009.0.0
> The second:
> 2009.1.0
> [...]

That afaics has one minor downside: You don't know in advance how the
next kernel is going to be called. Example: the kernel that is currently
developed could become 2008.4 (the fifth kernel in 2008) if this
development cycle in the end is one of the quicker ones and gets
finished this year. But if everything is a bit slower then it might
become 2009.0 (the first one in 2009).

Hence people that write a lot of articles about things that happen in
linux land (like LWN.net or I do) would be forced to write sentences
like "[...]the kernel that will become 2008.3 or 2009.0 will have
feature foo that works like this[...]". That will get really confusing
if you read those articles half a year later -- especially if that
kernel became 2008.3 in the end, because foo in 2009.0 might already
look quite different again...

> [...] Let the bike-shedding begin!

Please paint a tux on top of the roof.

CU
thl
--
Thorsten Leemhuis
c't- Magazin für Computertechnik web http://www.heise.de/ct/
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