Release numbering

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

kenner@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner) writes:

| I'd like to re-raise the issue of whether the next release should be
| 3.5 or 4.0.
| 
| There seems to be a fundamental disagreement here as to numberings.
| 
| Despite Mark just saying that "The tree-ssa changes are a huge perturbation",
| he doesn't feel it's large enough to justify a move to 4.0 due to not having
| enough user-visible changes.

I must confess that I got quite confused by the other mail.  I believe
we should take a consistent approach to the tree-ssa merge.  It can't
be said that is a huge pertubation -- one that is disruptive in the
sense that it causes huge projects going on and disagreements about
developers about when to branch -- and at the same hold that it does
not justify a new major release numbering. 

| A large number of other people on this list
| agree with that view.
| 
| Others, including me, Robert Dewar and a different large number of people
| on the list, feel that the internal changes are enough to justify the
| version number change because we want to give users notice that this is
| a major change.  The change in Fortran is also a large user-visible change.

Agreed.

| We've been through this discussion on the list a number of times and have
| not come to any conclusion.  I doubt we can, so I'm not suggesting we
| start discussion on this size list.
| 
| However, I believe that this is a large enough issue that it should be
| raised before the entire SC and see what conclusions they come to.

It is voting time?  If yes, I vote [yes] to call the next major release 4.0.

| So I'd like to request that the SC take up this issue.

-- Gaby