I think it makes sense for any number of possible reasons… * You occasionally want to support changes to the API in patch releases that break ABI compatability * Your release frequency is too low (or, equivalently, the energy barrier to make an official release is too high) * You don’t really have the resources to support wholly decoupled releases of just bug-fixes and new development * You want to control perceptions regarding how much different two versions are that differ in major and minor digits
But, you are right, it is not truly consistent with a large number of other projects version numbering practices. There are probably subtle issues I’ve failed to understand or explain too. Mark From: Hdf-forum <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf of Marco Atzeri <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Reply-To: HDF Users Discussion List <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Tuesday, June 21, 2016 at 7:17 AM To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [Hdf-forum] HDF5_DISABLE_VERSION_CHECK and disable_version_check On 21/06/2016 14:33, Miller, Mark C. wrote: My understanding is that releases of HDF5 which differ in only the last (patch) digit are not *always* ABI (Application Binary Interface) compatible. They try to be but for practical reasons they are not always. When they are not compatible, they should bump the ABI. HDF5 it is already a champion as bumper in that field, I am not aware of another library that bumped so many time between minor version. When the are not, compiling (e.g. using headers) with one version of the library but linking (e.g. using .a,.so,.dyllib) to another can fail for all sorts of hard-to-diagnose reasons. The normal case on distribution is different: I built the octave and netcdf package with hdf5-1.8.16; later I package the hdf5-1.8.17 that is supposed to be ABI compatible, and it produces a shared lib with the same name of hdf5-1.8.16 release. Why I should rebuild octave and netcdf ? It does not make sense. Regards Marco _______________________________________________ Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion. [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://lists.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_lists.hdfgroup.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/hdf5
_______________________________________________ Hdf-forum is for HDF software users discussion. [email protected] http://lists.hdfgroup.org/mailman/listinfo/hdf-forum_lists.hdfgroup.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/hdf5
