Re: [Gnu-arch-users] What are version numbers?

[Bruce Stephens]

Zack Brown <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

> Here's a guess: tla--devo--1.0 and tla--devo--1.1 are both regular
> tla branches. But they are so close to each other in purpose that it
> doesn't make sense to call the branch something other than devo. And
> so 1.0 and 1.1 are just a numbering scheme used to organize the devo
> branches.
>
> So in that case, does it make sense to consider 'devo--1.0' the real
> branch name, and the version number just a part of that name?

Probably.  It's up to the user to decide, really.  (This was the
subject of lots of discussion earlier.)  

Generally you'd develop multiple branches of the same version.  So Tom
might have tla--devo--1.0, tla--stable--1.0 and so on.

The only practical effect seems to be that version numbers are
orderable, so getting tla--devo will get the latest version of that
branch.  That also affects configurations.

So that suggests that if one had a big system defined by a
configuration, then you could explore various versions just by
changing the version numbers.  And you could get the latest version by
not specifying the versions.  Things like that.  There was
disagreement about whether this organisation of
category/branch/version is actually likely to be useful, or whether
it's essentially arbitrary.

[...]