From: Andrew S. <gt...@ma...> - 2004-08-29 10:15:12
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On Sun, 2004-08-29 at 04:20, Christian Hammond wrote: > > Or, we can take the opportunity to create an entirely new versioning > > scheme. This would help the people who are constantly confused that > > 0.x means "doesn't work well" and stay away from Gaim because of it. > > I would personally consider "Gaim v84", i.e. dropping the 0. > > altogether. That fits more with the whole "this is the 84th version > > of Gaim ever," thing, anyway. > > I'm probably the only person who doesn't like this. It doesn't leave > room for future decisions. Say down the road we do move to a standard > major.minor.micro system. We may not want to now, and we may not see a > reason for it, but we don't know what the project will be like down > the road. It could be that none of us are on it, or that we're all > still on it. Either way, if we switch to bumping up the major version > every release, we block all future decisions in this area. I for one > think this is a bad idea. > I agree here. Why not take this time to make the Gaim versioning system more meaningful? As it stands, the micro version has just suddenly been used to represent an important bug fix release. If Gaim moved to just a single number, this would no longer be obvious. Gaim v85 would just look like the next in the series of releases, and could just be ignored by people and distros that aren't upgrade happy. It might also be useful to start using the major versions for goals or other significant events. Maybe Gaim can go 1.?? when the status rewrite is done. Maybe 2.?? when gaim-vv is merged back. This would also help with libgaim. Maybe Gaim 1.?? can be when libgaim is entirely standalone. While Gaim v?? may look great for an instant messaging application, I think it would very strange for a library. Libraries need to have that developer oriented "look." In my personal, entirely aesthetic opinion, the single numbering scheme just looks bad to me. It's like a horrible mix between the marketing hype version numbers (Java jre 1.3 is really Java2) and programs that try to name themselves after years. It'll be right in the middle of this confusingly named category of software. I also think that the single number will be just as misleading to people that don't know about the project as the 0.x system supposedly is now. When you see new major version numbers in software, it usually means something. Netscape 6 is supposed to be 2 better than Netscape 4. It could leave the expectation that something extreme should have changed between Gaim v84 and Gaim v85. In truth, it's ofter much more like the difference between 0.84 and 0.85. The program has improved. Some bugs were fixed. Some features were added. Chances are there was nothing earth shattering that happened here. You often need to go a few releases before Gaim is going to seem that different to you. -- Andrew Sayman <gt...@ma...> |