On Sat, 13 Jan 2018, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> > Some people always seem to remain confused. Perhaps they have
> > the same confusion with timezones, for similar reasons.
>
> Both are confusing. One, Debian has the possibility to improve.
Yes, we could "improve". But for many of us that doesn't mean dropping
the release codenames: they're cute, they endear a Debian release to us,
they're tradition, and we want a *name* to call the baby we raise for
two years before we deem it stable.
However, there is no reason to not improve things so we can use a
numeric sequence-based release id everywhere we could use the code
name...
For example: stable, stretch, and debian9 could all be aliases to the
same release. While "stable" changes target at new releases, the
codename ("stretch") and the "sequential alias" ("debian9") wouldn't.
And no, it cannot start with a number, that is way too likely to cause
issues in unexpected places and so it is a non-starter.
Mind you, adding any sort of extra alias to a release would require a
non-trivial amount of work, and the people who would do it are the
ftpmasters and release managers... so their input and willingness to
implement are absolutely key factors on any proposal of change in this
area.
--
Henrique Holschuh
