Subject: Re: git version numbers

From: Jakub Narebski <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 07:40:44 -0700 (PDT)

Jeff King <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 06:13:22AM +1000, Tim Mazid wrote:
> 
> > I was just looking at various versioning schemes, and I came to wonder
> > about git's one.  Most of the ones out there are of the form
> > <major>.<minor>.<optional revision> (j.n.r), but git seems to have four,
> > as in 1.7.5.1.
> > 
> > So, I was wondering what you call each number in the git version; does
> > the usual j.n.r apply to the last three and the first one is a
> > "mystery"?  What is the official versioning scheme?  Does each number
> > have any particular name?
> 
> In "git w.x.y.z", the decoding is:
> 
>   w: not likely to change short of a complete rewrite or something that
>      is quite incompatible (i.e., will probably remain "1" for quite a
>      while)
> 
>   x: when this jumps, it is a "big" version change, meaning there may be
>      some minor incompatibilities or new ways of doing things. For
>      example, 1.5.0 introduced a lot of usability changes and the
>      separate-remotes layout became the default. In 1.6.0, we stopped
>      shipping "git-*" in the PATH, and started using some new packfile
>      features by default. And so on. If you want to know more, see
>      Documentation/RelNotes/1.?.0.txt.
> 
>   y: when this jumps, it is a new release cut from master that does not
>      have any "big" changes as above. There will be new features and
>      some bugfixes. See RelNotes/1.7.?.txt for examples of what gets
>      included.
> 
>   z: when this jumps, it is a bugfix release based on the feature
>      release w.x.y. See RelNotes/1.7.5.?.txt for examples.
> 
> Getting more to your actual question, I don't know that we ever use any
> particular name like "major" or "minor" for any of them. We do tend to
> use the terms "feature release" for w.x.y releases and "bugfix release"
> for w.x.y.z.

I think that Git numbering scheme actually follows semver pattern used
by Linux kernel... which just moved to  scheme: x.y[.z] from w.x.y[.z]
one

  https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/5/29/204 == http://lwn.net/Articles/445222/
  http://lwn.net/Articles/445223/  

Though git still breaks backward compatibility from time to time
(separate remotes by default, not shipping git-xxx n PATH,
deltabaseoffset, submodules, packed refs, push safeties, status !=
commit --dry-run) which change 'x'... though probably could change 'w'
(thought we be then at 7.x with git codebase still in flux...).

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git