[Mesa-dev] Proposal of date-based Mesa versioning for 2017

[Emil Velikov]

[adding mesa-maintainers to the mix]

On 1 October 2016 at 20:46, Marek Olšák <maraeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I propose that we use versioning in the form of "year.quarter".
>
> 2017 would start with 17.0, then 17.1, 17.2, 17.3 for following
> quarters of the year, respectively.
> 2018 would start with 18.0, then 18.1, 18.2, 18.3.
>
> The motivation is that you can easily tell when a specific Mesa
> version was released with an accuracy of 3 months.
>
> That's the only scheme that seems practical to me. Everything else
> seems arbitrary or random.
>
Afaict the only expectation from version numbers, is to never go back
in time. Anything else is a manner of personal interpretation and
there is will always someone who get confused.
Look at how [some] projects steadily roll in their 50s ;-)

That said, having a bit of a change is a good idea, esp. since we're
unlikely to have a major bump anytime soon.

As mentioned by others - having the second number represent the month
would be better, afaict.
Namely: YY.MM.PP. Thus 17.02.01 provides direct and clear feedback that
 - 2017 release, from the second month (Feb).
 - first bugfix release.

 * Distro/package maintainers, let us know if the above sounds fine on your end.

Since this will have an impact on the tarball URL I'm bringing forward
a question which has been asked a few times:

 * Should we drop the $VERSION directory in the URL, since it causes a
fair bit of nuisance during RC stage.
Namely from:
https://mesa.freedesktop.org/archive/$VERSION/mesa-$VERSION.tar.{xz,gz}
to:
https://mesa.freedesktop.org/archive/mesa-$VERSION.tar.{xz,gz}

Maintainers, kindly reply on both topics, even if you're neutral.

Thanks
Emil