From: "Adrian Crum" <adri...@hlmksw.com>
Scott Gray wrote:
On 13/04/2010, at 10:21 PM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:

On Apr 13, 2010, at 12:00 PM, Scott Gray wrote:

On 13/04/2010, at 9:36 PM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:

On Apr 13, 2010, at 11:33 AM, Scott Gray wrote:

Hi Jacopo,

What exactly does it mean to create an "alpha" release, compared to what we 
have now where we create a release branch?
It fundamentally means that we can distribute it outside of the inner group of contributors because the we can guarantee that it is full compliant with ASF license requirements.
Ah okay I see what you mean and that sounds fine to me. I'm not entirely clear on the version numbering though, 10.04a, 10.04b, 10.04 (this is the stable one), 10.04.1 (post stable bug fix release?)

Numbering is an interesting point because it is difficult to state what is "stable" from what is not; in your example, of course 10.04a is not stable; however what makes 10.04 stable? In fact it is less stable than 10.04.1. I don't know, if we are concerned about clarifying what we consider stable we could follow the following strategy: adding the prefix "alpha-" to all the releases we feel like should not be considered "stable".
For example:
alpha-10.04.a
alpha-10.04.b
Then when we feel we can consider the release stable:
10.04 (first stable release on 10.04)
10.04.1 (latest current stable release on 10.04)
or even:
stable-10.04
stable-10.04.1

Even if it could be simpler to just start from 10.04.1 since the first alpha 
release and then continue increasing the suffix:
alpha-10.04.1
alpha-10.04.2
stable-10.04.3
stable-10.04.4

but I understand that this is less appealing (i.e. the "stable" release will 
start with 10.04.3)

I don't think we're limited to the version name when it comes to describing each release, the download page and perhaps a README file can help as well.
How about:
10.04-alpha-1
10.04-alpha-2
10.04
10.04.1
10.04.2
?

Or what other ASF projects do:

10.04-RC1
10.04-RC2
10.04
10.04.1
10.04.2

-Adrian

+1

Jacques

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