Re: [mantisbt-dev] Mantis Release Naming

[Damien R. <dr...@ma...>]

On 2014-01-19 23:01, Paul Richards wrote:
> At the moment, our release naming schema is based on 1.2 / 1.3 etc
>
> I'm not necessarily sure we have clear guidelines on what we deem
> requires a change to either X,Y or Z in the current X.Y.Z scheme.

I think the definition is quite clear http://semver.org/

Even though I admit that in the current state of (1.2.x) affairs, we 
have not been respecting the definition

> In addition, we currently don't separately version our SOAP api.

Which I don't think is really necessary or is an issue as long as as the 
changes that are introduced are not breaking backwards compatibility. 
But then again, I'm not really an expert on webservices so maybe I'm wrong.

> In principle, looking at the likes of Microsoft, Ubuntu etc that tend to
> name releases after years, what would people's thoughts be of doing the
> following at some point in the future:

We are neither Microsoft nor Ubuntu, and I personally see no benefits 
whatsoever in changing our versioning scheme.

> i) we'd probably do 1(-2) "major" releases a year.
> ii) It would act as a driver to us to ensure we get to a point of
> shipping a release at least once a year of new features ;)

Wishful thinking IMO ;-)

> iii) As we'd have a clearer goal of when the release is due, we'd be
> less likely to want to backport every fix/feature/change unless it was a
> major issue for users

The backport thing is a collateral of the situation with 1.3.x, which I 
expect to go away as soon as we can get it out

> iv) For corporate companies, if we went with a 1 major release once a
> year, we'd basically being saying we'd guarantee supporting them for 2
> years. [although i'm sure if a major issue came up after that we'd still
> help]

We don't *guarantee* support - we provide it as best effort and also 
rely on the community to help. And I don't think we can or should change 
that approach.

I think the current scheme of supporting the current stable branch and 
the latest release of the previous one is good enough (even though we 
don't really support 1.1 anymore these days, we just tell people to 
upgrade but that's another story)