Re: Release numbering

[Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr at integrable-solutions dot net>]

Phil Edwards <phil@codesourcery.com> writes:

Hi,

[...]

| Here's my point:
| 
|     We need to hold the 4.0 label in reserve for Big Incompatible Changes.
|     Not just "user-visible" ones, although they clearly would play a part.
|     But any change where the users /must/ know whether 3.x or 4.x is in
|     use before they (or their tools) can get much farther, /those/ are
|     what we should wait for before changing the major version.
| 
| The 3.5 code is supposed to be starting to stabilize for release.  Now is
| clearly not the time to, for example, completely change the formatting
| of our diagnostic output.  But if we release 3.5 as 4.0, then the Big
| Incompatible Changes are going to have to wait until 5.0 to go in.

Or 6.0. Or whatever.  We never sworn carret diagnostics for 4.0.
Not just because we can't implement carret diagnostics now means we
should not reject the "huge perturbation" in the next release.

"Big Incompatible Changes" can happen several times; we need not wait
for all of them happening for 4.0, just like we would not "wait until
it is ready" before branching.

-- Gaby