Beyond 2.8 - some design thoughts

[John Ralls]

> On Dec 29, 2017, at 8:20 AM, Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be> wrote:
> 
> Op vrijdag 29 december 2017 10:11:08 CET schreef Alen Siljak:
>> I'd like to add that, to me, the difference between stable and unstable
>> version is obvious enough if I see v2.8.0-alpha1, 2.8.0-alpha2,
>> 2.8.0-beta1, 2.8.0-rc1, and then 2.8.0. I see no need for separate version
>> numbers.
> 
> That's a good point. I should check though whether our build system can handle 
> this. If it does or if we can make it so, using explicit alpha/beta/rc strings 
> would be very clear. It would be also require some getting used to as until 
> now we never made an explicit distinction between alpha/beta/rc (though we 
> imply it sometimes in warnings). Should we ? And if so, what would be the 
> criterion ?

I don’t think that the distros would like that scheme. They want suffixes separated by a hyphen to be reserved for their own nefarious purposes (mostly designating releases with back ported patches from the project’s VCS).

Better, I think, to use x.9y or perhaps x.9yy for unstable releases.

Regards,
John Ralls