[bt-devel] SVN code versioning scheme and Windows packages

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

We talked in IRC about version numbers of our svn code. Gary has
released packages for Windows which all have the same version number,
2.4.svn.  It's not good to have different versions with the same name,
so we should have a versioning scheme.

"2.4.svn" is not necessarily very good because it's not a fixed
convention. 2.4alfa/beta/rc are fixed conventions and people know they
are prereleases. But for SVN code it's different. I've seen schemes like

2.3+svn
2.3+svn20091025

which convey the idea of the previous version plus the later svn
additions. It's not clear whether 2.4.svn points to a pre2.4 or post2.4
version.

Having 2.4.svn in our svn code is of course not a problem because it's
meant to be placeholder for actual version number and is meant to be
visible only for those who build the code themselves. But because we now
have a situation where this has gone "public" it should be replaced with
some convention when the packages are created.

I suggest we use either "2.3+svn<date>" or "2.3+svnr<revision>". Another
possibility would be to use "2.4.alpha1" etc. but because we don't tag
them in svn they are not retracable to a revision.

At the moment my final vote would go to "2.3+svnr<revision>".

We also discussed with Gary about the upcoming Windows package naming.
In my opinion we should avoid the situation where the package is tested
only by few people and then released as "final". Xiphos did that and
IIRC had an embarrassing situation when someone publicly reviewed the
software and found some grave bugs which had gone unnoticed by
developers. I'm quite sure that our quality isn't any better because we
have had tests and bug reports only from couple of developers.

I would add a "beta" marker for the first Windows packages even if they
would be identical to final *nix versions. We would release 2.4beta1
for Windows together with 2.4 final for *nix. They would be compiled
from the same svn revision.

Is it also time to discuss about announcing the Windows package? Are we
going to release 2.3.3 or 2.4 next? Will we announce the Windows port
publicly then?


  Yours,
	Eeli Kaikkonen (Mr.), Oulu, Finland
	e-mail: eekaikko at mailx.studentx.oulux.fix (with no x)