[Uim] Development reformation: New versioning and release process

[YamaKen]

Hi all,

I want to revise the versioning rule and release process as
follows, to make our development efficient. Please let me know
your opinion.

* versioning
  - version number consist of major.minor.patchlevel
  - not use Linux-like stability indication by minor version
  - minor version is frequently increased for each stable
    release (as like 0.4.8 -> 0.4.9)
  - minor version may be increased to over ten (e.g. 1.12.0)
  - patchlevel is increased only when an error or security
    problem have been fixed
  - "development series" is simply called trunk
  - a release from trunk is not applied the release process,
    and named as "uim-trunk-snapshot20051128"

* release process
  - introduce feature freeze
  - create release branch (not stable branch) at a feature freeze
  - a release branch corresponds to a minor version
  - any versioned release is branched from trunk
  - release alpha, beta and final with tagging, as like as
    current process, from the branch
  - patch release does not create new branch (directly
    released from the existing branch)
  - announce to uim at fdo and Anthy-dev (Japanese is not required)

* misc
  - bug fixes should be backported to previous release branch
  - other changes must not be backported to previous release
    branch
  - security fixes can be appeared in a release branch at
    first, then forward-ported to trunk
  - no stable branches are created ("major version branch" is
    also) since our development on the trunk is contiguous and
    linear. such branching makes no sense
  - if an experimental and destructive development is needed,
    create a branch for it (as like composer and r5rs)

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YamaKen  yamaken at bp.iij4u.or.jp