On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 2:44 PM, Esteban Lorenzano <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > and yes, I know what you feel about version numbers... we (guys working with > vm) should find an unique versioning number. But is hard, right now we have > this different numbering: > > 1) Eliot has his own version number (I think based on svn commit version) > 2) Each platform (Linux, Windows and Mac) has his own versioning too. > 3) There are also 4.x versions alive (for mac, at least) > > I also don't know what does each version means (3.8 for unix, etc.). I named > cocoa versions 6.x because older versions based on carbon where 5.x, so I > thought: changing from carbon to cocoa is important enough to have a new > major version... but I dunno. >
The old numbering system came from pre-Pharo days, when the VM was just for Squeak. In those days, the VM number was meant to sync with the current Squeak image release - so vm 3.8 for Unix was the VM that accompanied the Squeak 3.8 release, compiled for the Unix platform. Each platform (and, indeed, each variant - such as Cocoa/Carbon) would use the same main version number, but with some other distinction built on (and these did change by platform). Eliot's VM now supports a wide range of roughly compatible Smalltalks (or near smalltalks), such as Pharo, Squeak, Croquet, Cuis, Newspeak, and probably others. In that environment, with each near-smalltalk having their own numbering schemes, the old numbering convention just doesn't make sense. So, his using the apparent SVN commit number makes as much sense as anything - probably a lot more than some. As for what you should call the Pharo branded and tweaked versions, that is obviously up to you. I would suggest finding something that makes it easy for us users to figure out which version of the PharoVM works with which Pharo image, if possible. -Chris
