[GNC] GNUCash XML format compatibility

Adrien Monteleone adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net
Wed Feb 12 17:32:31 EST 2020


I’m not sure that makes it any clearer as 10.1 is *also* codenamed ‘Buster’. (the entire Debian 10 version, all releases, are ‘buster’) 

I think this is a confusion of terminology.

It appears the questioner thought that a ‘major release’ is a specific singular release and that minor releases follow the major one.

The confusion is in referring to ‘major’ as a 'release’ when it in fact is a ‘version’. There is no such thing as a ‘major release’. There are several releases for each major ‘version’. There will of course, always be a first x.0 release of a major version. (and we are now on release #9, dubbed 3.8 of the major version 3 of GnuCash)

As described previously, major *versions* were '2.4', '2.6', and now '3'.

The reason for this difference is that prior to 3.0, a 3-number scheme was used. (fundamental.major.minor/bug-fix)

So there were several minor or 'bug-fix' releases in the 2.4.x series/version.

The same for the 2.6.x series/version. (the last of which was 2.6.21)

Development versions were odd-numbered. (‘2.5’, ‘2.7’ for example)

The third number was dropped for 3.0 (which would have been 2.8.0 had the old scheme continued) There were long explanations and discussions as to why this change was made. (now it is ‘major.minor’)

There will be ‘3.9xx' versions (the first being '3.901’) which are the development versions in the run-up to version ‘4’, the first release of which will be ‘4.0’. If the pattern holds, there will at some point then be ‘4.9xx’ development versions in the run-up to version ‘5’.


For the official outline of version numbering see the wiki: https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Development_Process#Release_Version_Numbering

And for the planned release schedule: https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Release_Schedule

Regards,
Adrien



> On Feb 12, 2020 w7d43, at 11:40 AM, David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> If Gnucash releases had codenames like some Linux releases such as Debian,
> it might be easier to understand.  The first Debian "buster" release was
> Debian 10.0.
> 
> David Carlson




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