[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Proposal to change Evergreen versioning scheme

[Lazar, Alexey Vladimirovich]

On 2013-01-04, at 12:47 , Joshua D. Drake <jd at commandprompt.com> wrote:

> 
> On 01/04/2013 10:33 AM, Kathy Lussier wrote:
> 
>> I disagree that there is a perception that Evergreen is stagnating
>> because we're still at 2.x, but if the problem is that we really should
>> be at 3.0 or 4.0 because of the big changes that have come with recent
>> releases, then maybe the solution is that we start following the
>> guidelines in http://www.open-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=versioning.
>> 
>> Kathy
> 
> Hello,
> 
> It is amazing that a community can spend so much time on something presumably simple as version numbers and what they mean. My two primary communities are PostgreSQL and Python, by far PostgreSQL and our current version is 9.2.2.
> 
> 9.2 is the major version, .2 is the bugfix/patchlevel/service pack level.
> 
> Once we release a major version, the only code that is pushed into the branch is bug fixes, no features or anything that doesn't fix a problem that has been found.
> 
> In the past we have also had the version number argument. We have found that the most sane way to do it is the way it is done. Which means we may be in the 9.x series for a very long time. This certainly hasn't hurt PostgreSQL's popularity.
> 
> The question is, when do we bump out of a major series to the next, say 7 to 8 or 8 to 9. Each of these jumps were done because of very specific reasons. When we went from 7 to 8, it was because we had native Windows support. When we went from 8 to 9 it is because we had native replication/hot standby support.
> 
> Version numbers are definitely something lands lends to marketing and advocacy. If it is not a major version update, people question if it is a needed update and what they will get from the update. Any version numbering change should be consistent with the goals of the project. If the project wants to project the stability of a release, keep it within the same numbering scheme as the previous release. If they want to promote the new whiz bang features, then it should jump in a manner consistent with advocating the features now available.

Oddly, I find myself agreeing with all the comments made so far on this topic.

However, I would like to also say that comparing Evergreen with PostgreSQL is not exactly apples to apples. Evergreen is aimed at a much wider audience, not just the IT crowd.

Aleksey Lazar
PALS
IS Developer and Intergrator
507-389-2907
http://www.pals.org/
alexey.lazar at mnsu.edu