Version numbering post 1.0

[John Whitley]

Robert Collins wrote:
> the folk that react emotively will be.

I think the term "emotively" is a bit disingenuous perceptions of  
software versions and common conventions there.  Not everyone has the  
time or energy to follow project feature sets, release goals, and so  
forth.  There is a highly useful self-marketing element to declaring  
a "1.0" at some point, and for later major revision bumps according  
to occasional milestones, watershed releases, etc.  Really, this is a  
signal to users from the developers that the project has, in the  
opinion of the developers, reached a new stage of its lifecycle and/ 
or has significant and interesting new features worthy of users'  
limited time and attention.

Here's a sort of gedankenexperiment to illustrate the semantic  
distinctions here.  Imagine a versioning scheme such as:

Bazaar X.Y (NNN)

X.Y are essentially format/feature driven numbers.  Nothing emotive  
about it; it maps directly into the project roadmap.  Bump decisions  
may themselves be a bit subjective, but that's fine.  When these  
values bump, it should be a signal for interested folks to come look  
at the release announcement and the NEWS file.  In contrast, NNN is  
the monthly release code, that doesn't even have to be never reset.   
Thus a series of releases might map out as:

0.18
0.90 (19)
0.90 (20)
...
1.0 (25)   -- All targeted 1.0 features have landed
1.0 (26)   -- Monthly update.  Just bugfixes, analogous to a  
patchlevel bump
                in some projs.
1.1 (27)   -- New minor feature bump, plus bugfixes.
...
2.0 (45)   -- Bazaar now sentient.  Takes over the internet.  See NEWS.
2.0 (46)   -- Even the sentient need some bugfixes, now and again.  ;-)

-- John