Re: Kernel version : what about s.yy.ww.tt scheme ?

el es
2008-07-22T12:30:31Z

<david <at> lang.hm> writes:

> you are well past the point where the complexity overwelmes the
> information you are providing.
>
> does it really matter _exactly_ when a release was made?
>
> David Lang
>
It might not really matter, but if you could find a reason for it to be useful,
then why not ?

As I wrote before, the development of the kernel is currently quite fast-paced.
The scale of changes is not that dramatic as it was in the early days, is it ?
Of course things get added, removed and so on. You even get lots of development
trees tested in linux-next on a daily basis. With date-based version number, you
can exactly position your own tree in time related to the current development.
It is more human-readable. The version number as it is, just does not entirely
fit the current model of development IMO - with 2 week merge window and roughly
2 months of stabilization period, the counter becomes sort of uninformative...
But for the releases, the week-based granularity seems to be enough - the
current habit of having a stable by number is actually OK too, since the -stable
team does its job. So, yes, to have a similar version number to what is used
currently, the scheme could be s.yy.ww.[nn || -rcX], s=series (2), yy= year,
ww=week when the tree was released, nn= stable number. What do you think ?