[Babase] Babase 2.0.0 -- Version number policy

Karl O. Pinc babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Fri, 15 Oct 2004 12:54:12 -0500


I suggest we call the new Babase version 2.0.0 when we've
finally got all the old stuff working in the new system.

The numbering system I propose is Major.Minor.Point

When we introduce exciting new functionality or
make major changes to the software we increase
the Major point number, from say 2.x.x to 3.0.0.
This is somewhat subjective, but gives us a good
way to talk about big projects.

When we make changes to the database that will cause
incompatabilities with the existing system we'll bump
the minor version number.  So, for example, a change to the
table structure (or even hardcoded data values like our
infamous Dcause change) would break existing queries,
so we'd bump the minor number and go to 2.1.0.

Changes to the minor version number are what the user
needs to look out for.  Note that chaning the major
version number resets the minor version number.
A user's just going to have to know whether the major
number change means incompatability or not.  (Mostly,
I'd expect incompatability, but maybe not.)  As I don't
expect we'll have new major numbers very often I don't
see this as a problem.

Any software or documentation or any changes at all bump
the point release, say from 2.0.0 to 2.0.1.  Mostly
these will be bug fixes (or documentation fixes) but
I'm sure there will also be plenty of improvements
and small additions too.

How does this sound?

Karl <kop@meme.com>
Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
                  -- Robert A. Heinlein