Phobos version naming

[Paul Backus]

On Wednesday, 3 November 2021 at 17:42:06 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 2021-11-03 12:29, Paul Backus wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 3 November 2021 at 15:37:05 UTC, Andrei 
>> Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> Currently it's std.v2 but I'm unclear how it goes from there. 
>>> By semver we'd go with std.v2_0_1 and so on.
>> 
>> This seems like a misuse of semver to me. Backwards-compatible 
>> bugfixes and additions to std.v2 can go directly into std.v2, 
>> just like they currently do for std. There is no need to 
>> create separate packages for every minor and patch increment.
>> 
>> If we really want to support users depending on a specific 
>> minor/patch release of Phobos other than the one shipped with 
>> their D toolchain, we should put Phobos on code.dlang.org.
>
> OK, so the way to go is with std version naming is...?

Having thought about this some more, I think there are two 
separate issues here: naming and distribution.

SemVer tells us how to do naming; i.e., how to refer to a 
particular release, like "1.0.0" or "2.0.1". I do not think we 
should abandon SemVer for naming.

However, SemVer does not tell us how to do distribution; i.e., 
how users can get access to a particular release. There are many 
possible choices we can make here:

* Ship every release with the official D distribution.
* Ship the latest release of each major version with the official 
D distribution.
* Ship every release on code.dlang.org.
* Ship some releases with the official D distribution and others 
on code.dlang.org.

Given that code.dlang.org already has infrastructure in place for 
distributing many releases of the same package, I think it makes 
sense to use it for at least some of Phobos's distribution, if 
not all of it. And my gut reaction is that shipping *every* 
release in the official D distribution would be too much--at the 
very least, new users should not be presented with dozens of 
standard-library releases to choose from right off the bat. So, 
the right answer is probably somewhere between those two extremes.