On Sat, Apr 07, 2001 at 12:01:01PM -0700, devl-request at freenetproject.org 
wrote:

> > On 07 Apr 2001 20:38:28 +0200, Stefan Reich wrote:
> >
> > > That's what I wanted to hear. I say go for 0.3.8.2! (what a horribly
> long
> > > version number...)
> > >
> > > -Stefan
> >
> > Quick request, can we start putting the version number somewhere in the
> > freenet programs or in the zip / tar.gz file?  Right now the only
> > version info available is build number, and even the directory name is
> > Freenet/, not Freenet-0.3.8.2.  I can never tell exactly which version
> > I'm running.

Are the version numbers being chosen to satisfy logic or psychology?
Whereas a jump to 0.3.8.2 "feels" less significant than a jump to
0.3.9 and one could argue for choosing to version this way, I'm not 
sure it's really that useful developers or users. A more logical
versioning scheme might use major/minor/subminor numbers, where
the major number gets incremented when backwards compatibility is 
broken, the minor number gets incremented when new features are added 
(forward compatibility is broken), and the subminor number gets 
incremented when neither forwards nor backwards compatibility is 
broken (e.g. bugfixes, added documentation, etc).

For me at least, this greatly simplifies the decision on whether 
or not it's worth it to upgrade. Subminor increments are definite
upgrades (they fix existing problems but don't introduce anything
new that might be broken), minor increments are the "upgrade if
you're interested in using new features" type, and major increments
are the things you upgrade to only if you're not concerned with 
backwards compatibility.

m.


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