From: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@sisk.pl>
To: david@lang.hm
Subject: Re: [RFC] Kernel version numbering scheme change
Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:45:15 +0200
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Cc: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>, Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>,
       Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
       Steven Noonan <steven@uplinklabs.net>, Adrian Bunk <bunk@kernel.org>,
       Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
References: <20081016002509.GA25868@kroah.com> <200810191451.24342.rjw@sisk.pl> <alpine.DEB.1.10.0810190928360.20238@asgard.lang.hm>
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On Sunday, 19 of October 2008, david@lang.hm wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Oct 2008, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> 
> > On Sunday, 19 of October 2008, Jiri Kosina wrote:
> >> On Fri, 17 Oct 2008, david@lang.hm wrote:
> >>
> >>>> Surely some scripts will start to break as soon as the third number gets
> >>>> three digits.
> >>> we've had three digit numbers in the third position before (2.3 and 2.5
> >>> went well past three digits IIRC)
> >>
> >> Did we? I only recall 2.5.7[something] and 2.3.5[something] (plus special
> >> 2.3.99 release).
> >>
> >>>> Actually, I thought we could continue to use a w.x.y.z numbering
> >>>> scheme, but in such a way that:
> >>>> w = ($year - 2000) / 10 + 2 (so that we start from 2)
> >>>> x = $year % 10
> >>>> y = (number of major release in $year)
> >>>> z = (number of stable version for major release w.x.y)
> >>>> Then, the first major release in 2009 would be 2.9.1 and its first
> >>>> -stable "child" would become 2.9.1.1.  In turn, the first major
> >>>> release in 2010 could be 3.0.1 and so on.
> >>> if you want the part of the version number to increment based on the year,
> >>> just make it the year and don't complicate things.
> >>
> >> In addition to that, having the kernel version dependent on year doesn't
> >> really seem to make much sense to me. Simply said, I don't see any
> >> relation of kernel source code contents to the current date in whatever
> >> calendar system.
> >>
> >> And 2.x+1.y-rcZ+1 immediately following 2.x.y-rcZ really hurts my eyes :)
> >
> > Hm, why would that happen?
> 
> with the date based numbers, that was one of the things that 'could' 
> happen as the year changed (2008.5.0-rc4 would be followed by 
> 2009.1.0-rc5)

Well, in that case I think it would be reasonable to cuntinue the 2008
numbering so that 2009.1.0-rc5 in your example would still be 2008.5.0-rc5.

That said, I kind of agree that the numbering need not be time-related.  One
alternative might be to release 2.9.0 instead of 2.6.29 and then continue in
in such a way that each of the three numbers is always a one-digit decimal.
Then, we'd have 2.9.0, 2.9.1 ... 2.9.9, 3.0.0, 3.0.1 etc.

Thanks,
Rafael
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