[U-Boot-Users] RFC: U-Boot version numbering

[Feng Kan <fkan@amcc.com>]

Albert ARIBAUD wrote:
> Wolfgang Denk a ?crit :
>   
>> Hello,
>>
>> I would like to get your general opinion about  changing  the  U-Boot
>> version numbering scheme.
>>
>> To be honest, I never really understood myself how this  is  supposed
>> to work and if the next version should be 1.3.4 or 1.4.0 or 2.0.0, i.
>> e.  which  changes  / additions are important enough to increment the
>> PATCHLEVEL or even VERSION number.
>>
>> I therefor suggest to drop this style of version numbering and change
>> to a timestamp based version  number  system  which  has  been  quite
>> successfully  used  by  other  projects  (like  Ubuntu)  or  is under
>> discussion (for Linux).
>>
>> My suggestion for the new version numbers is as follows:
>>
>> VERSION = 1	(at least for the time being)
>>
>> PATCHLEVEL = current year - 2000
>>
>> SUBLEVEL = current month
>>
>> Both PATCHLEVEL and SUBLEVEL shall always be 2 digits (at  least  for
>> the  next 91+ years to come) so listings for example on an FTP server
>> shall be in a sane sorting order.
>>
>> If we accept this system, the next release which probably comes out
>> in October 2008 would be v1.08.10, and assuming the one after that
>> comes out in January 2009 would be named v1.09.01
>>
>> Comments?
>>     
>
> A minor :) issue I can see is that there might be *some* confusion 
> because of an apparent, numerical rollback from 1.3.4 back to 1.08.xx. 
> You're bound to encounter some folks who will ask, again and again, why 
> you're  working on 1.02.yy when 1.3.4 is out there.
>
> Now an obvious solution would be to use 2 as the major number. If you're 
> serious about not knowing when a major number bump-up is required, then 
> you should be fairly ok with starting at 2.08.01 rather than 1.08.01. :)
>
> Joke aside: you'll get questions *anyway*, and the scheme is as fine to 
> me as it it.
>
> Another, maybe trickier, issue is: you won't be able to cleanly number 
> interim releases if you encounter a really serious bug right after 
> you've produced this month's release, will you?
>
> Amicalement,
>   
Perhaps the Version itself can be removed, there doesn't seems to be a 
point about it.
You can just do v2008.1. You can add a third field for the day for those 
really serious
bugs:)

My two cent?