I think Karthik correctly identified the two reasons we might want to
denote a release as "unstable":
a) Compatibility. Whether we have freedom to break compatibility before the
final release, i.e. what "alpha" typically means.
b) Quality. As Konst says, a release can be allowed to break compatibility
("alpha") but itself still be a high quality release.
We could try and separate out these two concerns when it comes to
versioning, but I think in reality users only care about prod vs. non-prod,
which is why many other projects (Linux, HBase, etc) just have two release
lines: "stable" (compatible/good-quality) vs. "unstable"
(unknown-compatible/unknown-quality).
To this end, I don't mind what we choose, as long as the difference between
stable and unstable is denoted by the version number. I don't like the idea
of tagging a release as good after the fact (1). The other projects we've
used as examples make strong statements about their stable release lines,
and we should too. Our downstreams and end users will appreciate clarity
from the version number.
Best,
Andrew
On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 9:51 AM, Hitesh Shah <hit...@apache.org> wrote:
> There are a couple of different approaches we could take.
>
> How about publishing/releasing bits such as “2.8.0-RC0”. Downstream
> projects can depend on these and use them normally similar to the approach
> that they would have taken with release 2.8.0 or 2.8.0-alpha. After some
> baking ( or more RC suffixed releases), at some point, a proper 2.8.0
> release could be made? The RC tag clearly indicates to downstream layers
> that things will be in flux slightly. Trying to distinguish
> incompatibilities between 2.8.0 and 2.8.1/2.8.2 ( just because 2.8.0 was
> tagged alpha in documentation ) are likely to be a nightmare to deal with
> especially for new features introduced in the 2.8 release ( which might get
> changed slightly based on usage feedback ).
>
> Furthermore, considering the release history of hadoop, the likelihood
> that 2.9.0 will show up before 2.8.2 seems to be very high.
>
> With respect to the proposed choice (1), I thought that HBase applied a
> different approach. The odd-number releases were always unstable and the
> even number releases were the stable ones. This “could" make things a bit
> more clear for downstream users without needing to resort to modified
> versioned numbers ( with alpha/beta tags ) or requiring users to go look up
> the website to find out which particular version of 2.8.x was the first
> stable release.
>
> thanks
> — Hitesh
>
>
>
>
>
> On Apr 22, 2015, at 2:17 PM, Vinod Kumar Vavilapalli <
> vino...@hortonworks.com> wrote:
>
> > Forking the thread.
> >
> > In the previous 2.7.1 thread [1], there were enough yays to my proposal
> to wait for a bug-fix release or two before calling a 2.x release stable.
> There were some concerns about the naming.
> >
> > We have two options, taking 2.8 as an example
> > (1) Release 2.8.0, call it as an alpha in documentation and release
> notes, wait for a 2.8.1/2.8.2 reasonably stable enough to be called as the
> first stable release of 2.8.
> > (2) Release 2.8.0-alpha, 2.8.0-beta etc before culminating in a 2.8.0
> stable release.
> >
> > (1) is what I preferred first up. This is what HBase used to do, and far
> beyond, in the linux kernel releases. It helps in scenarios where we are
> forced to downgrade a release, say due to major issues. We can simply
> announce it as not stable retroactively, change the pointers on our website
> and move on.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > +Vinod
> >
> > [1] http://markmail.org/thread/ogzk4phj6wsdpssu
> >
> > On Apr 21, 2015, at 4:59 PM, Vinod Kumar Vavilapalli <
> vino...@hortonworks.com> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Sure, I agree it's better to have clear guidelines and scheme. Let me
> fork this thread about that.
> >>
> >> Re 2.7.0, I just forgot about the naming initially though I was clear
> in the discussion/voting. I so had to end up calling it alpha outside of
> the release artifact naming.
> >>
> >> Thanks
> >> +Vinod
> >>
> >> On Apr 21, 2015, at 4:26 PM, Andrew Wang <andrew.w...@cloudera.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> I would also like to support Karthik's proposal on the release thread
> about
> >>> version numbering. 2.7.0 being "alpha" is pretty confusing since all
> of the
> >>> other 2.x releases since GA have been stable. I think users would
> prefer a
> >>> version like "2.8.0-alpha1" instead, which is very clear and similar to
> >>> what we did for 2.0 and 2.1. Then we release 2.8.0 when we're actually
> >>> stable.
> >>>
> >>> I don't know if it's retroactively possible to do this for 2.7.0, but
> it's
> >>> something to consider for the next 2.7 alpha or beta or whatever.
> >>>
> >
>
>
