Re:Not convinced by rolling releases
by ChuckMcM on Thursday March 07, 2013 @03:41PM
(#5340069)
Well, I've grown up with semantic version numbers. In those there was a document somewhere that described exactly what the version numbers "meant" in terms of compatibility. So
Major.minor,sub-minor
was the most common, the policy there was :
* major number change, may have incompatible changes with
APIs. Applications depending on a major number won't be
compatible with the previous version of the library.
* minor number change, changes by 'addition' only, no
changes to existing code necessary, backward
compatibility testing advised.
* sub-minor number change. No semantic changes, bugs and
other defects fixed, some workarounds may no longer be
needed.
With rolling releases it seems the only safe thing you can assume is that no earlier release is compatible and later releases are probably compatible. That seems like a step backward.
Major.minor,sub-minor
was the most common, the policy there was :
* major number change, may have incompatible changes with APIs. Applications depending on a major number won't be compatible with the previous version of the library.
* minor number change, changes by 'addition' only, no changes to existing code necessary, backward compatibility testing advised.
* sub-minor number change. No semantic changes, bugs and other defects fixed, some workarounds may no longer be needed.
With rolling releases it seems the only safe thing you can assume is that no earlier release is compatible and later releases are probably compatible. That seems like a step backward.