[ On , April 23, 2003 at 20:27:17 (+0300), Arto Huusko wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: NetBSD version naming - suggestion
>
> And while I'm here, I could just as well say my opinion on this: I think
> bumbing -current's version to "just_released + 1" is a good idea. So,
> we'd be now at 1.7R. And I don't think it's a problem if it is not known
> beforehand what the actual release will be called. If there won't be
> 1.7, fine. 1.7ZZZA just becomes 2.0 then (and -current 2.1A).

I too think this is the best of the proposed solutions.  In fact this is
the way I've always thought it should have worked.

I do like the FreeBSD scheme a bit better, but perhaps it is too
different from what NetBSD folks have come to expect.

I think the real problem is that non-developers (and here I mean
everyone who doesn't have commit access) are treating the 1.Na -current
numbering schemes as if they're somehow snapshot "releases" when they're
absolutely not.  I know it's a bit of an over-simplification to say
this, but really they're essentially only _kernel_ ABI change _hints_.
There could even be daily snapshots available now (assuming the builds
complete on the "releng" machine), so using the 1.Na numbers as any kind
of snapshot release identifier is very foolish.

The FreeBSD folks seem to hide their kernel ABI identifier in a place
where only true developers would think to look, and to the outside world
they simply present the "-current" branch and give no more indicators
than that.  As far as I can tell (I've never actually run
FreeBSD-current, only read the sources :-) it doesn't even show up in
the "uname -a" output, though maybe that's going a bit too far.

Of course relatively speaking the FreeBSD project has a far higher ratio
of "release" to "-current" users -- I only know about two people out of
the much larger FreeBSD crowd I directly know who occasionally build and
try FreeBSD-current.  Everyone else in that crowd (including myself)
only use pure releases or at best will track their "-STABLE"
(i.e. *_RELENG) branch.  Out of the NetBSD users I directly know, I'd
say about half will build and even use NetBSD-current (and indeed I've
followed NetBSD-current off and on at times too).

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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