[Koha-devel] Version numbering, starting a discussion

[Chris Cormack]

On 1 December 2011 21:11, Paul Poulain <paul.poulain at biblibre.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> There are 2 questions in this mail:
> === DB update numbering ===
> The bug 7167 will probably pushed in a few days, and it's a new way to
> handle updatedatabase. They will be non-linear, meaning update 1 can be
> applied after update 2, and before update 3.
> The previous numbering pattern, made from 4 parts (3.06.00.001 for
> example) was made to handle release version + DB version.
> The 1st update for version 3.8.3 would be called 3.08.03.001 for example.
>
> With the new scheme, there's no need to have a so complex numbering
> system. We could just number our databases update 1, 2, 3, ...
>
> What do you think of this idea ? Why should we keep the previous
> numbering scheme ? Any other suggestion ?
>
> === Koha version numbering ===
> This second topic is a harder one. So please, don't jump on this and
> forget the 1st one.
> I was wondering why/if we should continue with our 3.6 / 3.8 / 4.0 / ...
> numbering.
> This question arise because some of our libraries have problem
> understanding what will be the next version number. It will be 3.8. And
> the next one ? 3.10 or 4.0, depending on Solr or any other major change
> being applied. And maybe, in april, Solr will be pushed, in this case it
> would be called 4.0 (I don't think it will, but it's just for the example)
> That's quite unclear for external people.
>
> That's why I was wondering : why not use another, totally new numbering
> schema.
> The "koha april 2012" could be called 2012.A, or 12.A, or 12.1. The
> "Koha October 2012" could be called 2012.B, or 12.B, or 12.2 (or any
> other scheme, I'm open to any proposal, including not changing, I just
> want to share the idea. - we should just avoid Ubuntu numbering patter:
> 12.4 / 12.10 would be a bad idea, as Ubuntu is released in april and
> october, like Koha. So it may be confusing -)
> What we need is a number for each monthly maintainance release. But for
> the rest, what about changing everything in our numbering method ?
>
> There's also another interest with this idea: if we change completly our
> numbering, we would not seem to be "late" against another software that
> is currently numbered 4.8 (i've been in Greece recently, for a talk in
> academic libraries. I saw that there is a big confusion here, and
> changing the numbering would also help I think).
>
> Let's start the discussion, but please, on both topics, that are related
> but different: we could change #1 and not #2 !
> --

Remembering that we also do maintenance releases, what would they be
2012.A.1 2012.A.2 ?

I think the confusion comes in when we talk about 3.8 .. we never do
releases like that, its 3.8.0, 3.8.1 etc. Having the third number is
very handy, and will be very useful when we get Koha into debian which
we are working on.

As for the db versions, I have no opinion on that, so my vote is
abstain for 1, and -1 for 2

Chris