Next focus: PROCESS

[foobar]

On Wednesday, 12 December 2012 at 18:33:17 UTC, Jesse Phillips 
wrote:
> On Wednesday, 12 December 2012 at 10:22:32 UTC, foobar wrote:
>> To summarize:
>
>> 2. The version scheme is meaningless. Please check out 
>> http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/#firefox as an 
>> example. It's perfectly clear, you can choose what Mozilla 
>> calls a channel - i.e "release" or "beta".
>
> This is a poor example as it doesn't show how the development 
> team develops these versions.
>
> If we are going to have a branch supported separate from the 
> beta/dev builds then we need a way to say that this stable 
> version is newer but is not as new as the beta/dev.
>
> If we release 2.61 as a stable, we would then develop new 
> features in which version? 2.62 beta 1? If so, when we release 
> 2.61 with a bug fix which version do we release? 2.62? 2.61 
> stable 2?
>
> You are right that version numbers have absolutely no meaning, 
> I don't remember if it was you, but they are also not as 
> important as the process improvements. However if we assign 
> meaning to numbers there can be benefit. Mozilla basically just 
> did away with the Major version. (I say we do a Linux and leave 
> the 2 then realize it has no meaning and up it to 3 when we 
> reach the age of the 2.0 kernel)
>
> We should combine your beta with an added version number.
>
> 2.61.0 => bugfixes => 2.61.1
> 2.61.0 => newfeatures => 2.62.0 beta 1
> 2.62 => preparing for stabilizing => 2.62 rc1
>
> just some thoughts.

Per my answer to Rob:
D2 *is* the major version.
releases should be minor versions and largely backwards 
compatible - some evolution is allowed given some reasonable 
restrictions like a proper migration path over several releases.
Critical bug-fixes can go directly on stable releases but nothing 
else.

Other enhancements, new features, etc, go first on monthly beta 
versions and need to pass acceptance tests & community approval 
before graduating to stable. So a big feature such as "User 
defined attributes" can spend several cycles of beta testing and 
can go redesigns until everyone agrees that the final design is 
worthy of inclusion in the next stable release.