[GRASS5] Roadmap: Numbering

[Markus Neteler]

On Mon, Aug 18, 2003 at 09:56:15PM +0200, Buchan Milne wrote:
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> Markus Neteler wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 14, 2003 at 04:20:30PM +0200, Buchan Milne wrote:
> >
> >>Markus Neteler wrote:
> >>
> >>>On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 07:28:43PM +0100, Paul Kelly wrote:
> >>
> >>>According to this suggestion I have updated the roadmap:
> >>>http://grass.itc.it/roadmap.html
> >>
> >>As a mostly-user of grass, I get confused by this. Where was 5.2? Why no
> >>5.1 if there is a 5.3? What about 5.7 if there is a 5.8?
> >>
> >>The other software I am familiar with that has a similar problem with
> >>versioning is samba. They had a stable release branch, 2.0.x, and were
> >>doing heavy development in HEAD, which was supposed to be 2.1. Then,
> >>they realised they would need a new stable branch with selected features
> >>from HEAD (win2k support when a domain controller). So, they renumbered
> >>HEAD to 3.0, but the new stable release branch became 2.2.x.
> >>
> >>Grass is in a similar position. I would suggest, to keep people from
> >>wondering about seemingly random version numbers, to:
> >>
> >>- -keep 5.0.x branch in bugfix mode
> >>- -development of current grass50 cvs becomes 5.1, if pre-release
> >>snapshots are to be made, eventually becoming 5.2.x
> >
> > To me this looks more confusing:
> 
> To whom? Grass developers? How many grass users have seen 5.1 who would
> be confused by this?

this is easy to answer:
Checked on Mon, Jul 07, 2003 at 11:42:59AM +0200, Markus Neteler wrote:
   GRASS 5.1 Linux Binaries downloads in 1-6/2003 (only grass.itc.it):
         1168 successful downloads from 307 different sites
   GRASS 5.1 source code downloads in 1-6/2003 (only grass.itc.it):
          538 successful downloads from 245 different sites
   The numerous mirror sites are not considered here.

I should do a fresh 'access_log' check again.

> > replacing an existing 5.1 with
> > another 5.1 is not easy to understand. That's why I suggested to
> > skip number 5.1 (say, rename the current 5.1 to 5.7) and also
> > skip number 5.2 (as an unstable version following the non-existing
> > 5.1 is 5.3 which then leads to 5.4).
> >
> 
> For external people (ie who install grass and use it) 5.0->5.4,
> 5.7,5.8->6.0 makes one wonder what happened to 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, or if
> there were 5.3.x releases (development), what happened to 5.1 and 5.2.

OK, it seems you are not happy with the roadmap.html document.

> Users should never rely on version numbers in CVS, and surely 5.1.1 is
> no more confusing than 5.3.1 if they though 5.1.0 was going to be the
> new vector code?
> 
> But you have to decide who it's more important not to confuse, and who
> you are more likely to confuse ...

Very true. However, it seems that most developers are not too interested
in this version numbering - so I don't know.
In any case we should *release* a new version and not only talk about
it. 

Markus