[Gnu-arch-users] What are version numbers?

[Zack Brown]

Hi folks,

I think I have a workable understanding of archives, categories, and
branches, but version numbers are still confusing me. Maybe someone can
explain.

My understanding so far is that tla version numbers are not related to the
version number of the actual project (so Linux 2.6.0-test1 has a project
version number of 2.6.0-test1, which is independent of the tla version number
appearing in the fully qualified tla project name).

I'm guessing that the tla version number is essentially chosen for
organizational reasons during development. So just as a developer might
start a new branch in order to work on a particular new feature, there
are similar reasons for selecting a version number. But what those
reasons might be, or how it would fit into the organization of a
project, I don't know.

Using 'tla abrowse address@hidden' I've looked over Tom's tree, and I
see things like this:

    tla--devo
      tla--devo--1.0
        base-0 .. patch-89

      tla--devo--1.1
        base-0 .. patch-155

So it seems version numbers are used somewhere...

Here's a guess: tla--devo--1.0 and tla--devo--1.1 are both regular tla
branches. But they are so close to each other in purpose that it doesn't
make sense to call the branch something other than devo. And so 1.0 and
1.1 are just a numbering scheme used to organize the devo branches.

So in that case, does it make sense to consider 'devo--1.0' the real
branch name, and the version number just a part of that name?

I'm just making stabs. Maybe someone could really explain it.

Thanks,
Zack

-- 
Zack Brown