[wp-hackers] 120-day release cycle - version numbering

Scott Plumlee wp-hackers at plumlee.org
Mon Oct 2 20:56:18 GMT 2006


Another thought about this.  If the developers do commit to a 120 day 
release cycle, then should the version numbering become consistent? IE, 
we should now see 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, etc etc.  If I remember right (aha, see 
http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_1.6), 1.6 was skipped because the 
changes were so major between 1.5 and 2.0 that a new major version 
number was wanted.

OpenBSD (just picking one I'm familiar with) rolls out 2 releases a 
year.  May and November, and the version number goes up by .1 each time. 
  Doesn't matter what the changes, it's always a .1 increase.  This way, 
it's very clear what's the latest version, what the previous was, and 
what the upgrade path is.  And releases are not longer supported after 2 
new versions (when 4.0 comes out, 3.7 is deprecated).

 From a (shudder) marketing standpoint, it may not be as sexy to only go 
from 2.1 to 2.2 to 2.3.  Most commercial software seems to like jumping 
up versions to give the feel that more has been done, from what I can tell.

The Linux kernel used to use something like an even number for a stable 
release, and an odd for the development release.  So you got slightly 
faster numbering, but still consistency as to releases.

Just my two cents as 5 PM approaches.




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