Re: [Mingw-cross-env-list] Stable update process (was Re: mxe for windows 7 (64 bit))

[Volker Grabsch]

Tony Theodore schrieb:
> On 21/07/2013, at 8:39 PM, Volker Grabsch <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Tony Theodore schrieb:
> >> That seems clear, the stable branch is both the changelog and download, 
> >> and the release is the tested updates from master.
> >> 
> >> The only other minor thing is (in)significance of numbering. We'll end up 
> >> with a "2.99" at some stage, and major.minor isn't really applicable. This 
> >> will be the 30th release, should we call it "Release 30" and just 
> >> increment it from there? (maybe adding a yyyy-mm?)
[...]
> > The major version is meant to indicate backwards-incompatible
> > changes to the public interface. While this is mostly clear
> > for libraries and command line tools, it is of course fuzzy
> > for a project like MXE. I decided to switch from 1.x to 2.x
> > when I changed the main script from a shell script to a Makefile,
> > which was quite a huge change in the "public interface" of MXE.
> 
> Sounds good, something like adding dynamic/shared builds would possibly 
> constitute such a change - especially if we want to run them side-by-side.

That's a valid way of thinking. However, let's face it: In these
times, version numbers are mostly for marketing purposes. So feel
free to jump from 2.x to 3.0 as soon as you think we need some
extra attention. ;-)  [1]

However, for this release I think it's sufficient to name it 2.23
and to make it public on platforms like Freecode.com and others.
The last release was more than a year ago, so the release will
give us more than enough attention.

Or, maybe this way of thinking is already obsolete, as nobody
cares about version numbers anymore? Not sure.


Regards,
Volker


[1] Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the first
    person who expressed this view in public was Paul Graham
    in his essay "The Other Road Ahead":

| http://paulgraham.com/road.html
|
| [...]
| Your software changes gradually and continuously. Some
| changes might be bigger than others, but the idea of
| versions just doesn't naturally fit onto [...] software.
|
| [...] this might sound odd, because we were always
| announcing new versions. This was done entirely for PR
| purposes. The trade press, we learned, thinks in version
| numbers. They will give you major coverage for a major
| release [...] and generally a paragraph at most for a
| [minor] release [...].
|
| Some of our competitors [...] actually had version numbers.
| And for these releases [...] they would get all kinds
| of publicity. We didn't want to miss out, so we started
| giving version numbers to our software too. When we wanted
| some publicity, we'd make a list of all the features we'd
| added since the last "release," stick a new version number
| on the software, and issue a press release saying that the
| new version was available [...]

-- 
Volker Grabsch
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