Re: why no odd numbered platforms

[Gerald Champagne <gerald io com>]

Jeff Waugh wrote:

> <quote who="Gerald Champagne">
>
>>Many projects release even numbered stable releases and odd numbered
>>development releases, but Gnome never releases odd numbered development
>>releases.  Why was the recent release called Gnome 2.0 Alpha 1 instead
>>of just Gnome 1.5.0?
>>
>
> This is an alpha release of the GNOME 2.0 platform. Unfortunately, several
> sites have reported it as something more than that, and many people have
> misunderstood the intent of the release.
>

Actually, that's my point.  It's just a first stab at getting everything
to compile together.  That sounds like the start of a development series.

>>I think that it would help to create an odd numbered development series
>>and release more often
>>
>
> As it happens, the four horsemen of the apocalypse (Glib, ATK, Pango and
> GTK+) have had a number of releases over the past few months, all as 1.3.x.

But that's not the platform with all the new Bonobo changes and everything
else that has to work together.

>>By only releasing something called Alpha
>>and Beta, there will be a tendency to reduce the number of releases.
>>
>
> Hopefully, there will be only an alpha and a beta of the GNOME 2.0 platform
> libraries - these have to freeze for desktop and application developers
> wanting to begin or finalise ports.

Wow, that's pretty fast.  I guess I'd just call these two releases 1.5.0
and 1.5.1 then.  Then go to 2.0 if it works.  It just removes some of
the hesitation to release an intermediate version if it's just another point
release in a development series.


>>Of course if it doesn't make sense to create a development series, then
>>the next stable releases should just be called 2.0, then 2.1, instead of
>>1.0, 1.2, and 1.4.
>>
>
> Odd-numbered minor releases would confuse people used to the 'standard'
> versioning they're used to in the free software community. Is there any
> benefit to adding odd numbered releases? I can't see any worth the
> confusion. :)

I know most have only even numbered stable releases, but I guess I was just

comparing it to KDE 2.0, 2.1, 2.2.


Thanks.

Gerald