Re: (Short?) merge window reminder

From: Jan Engelhardt
Date: Tue May 24 2011 - 08:15:23 EST


On Tuesday 2011-05-24 01:33, Linus Torvalds wrote:

>Another advantage of switching numbering models (ie 3.0 instead of
>2.8.x) would be that it would also make the "odd numbers are also
>numbers" transition much more natural.
>
>Because of our historical even/odd model, I wouldn't do a 2.7.x -
>there's just too much history of 2.1, 2.3, 2.5 being development
>trees.

.oO(Though once 2.{7 or more, odd} trickle into the distros, it would
become pretty much apparent that they are not devel.)

>And then in another few years (probably before getting close to 3.40,
>so I'm not going to make a big deal of 3 = "third decade"), I'd just
>do 4.0 etc.

While 2.6 has certainly worn out, already thinking of a 4.0 is highly
reminiscient of the version number arms race Firefox and ChromeBrowser
are doing currently.

>Because all our releases are supposed to be stable releases these
>days, and if we get rid of one level of numbering, I feel perfectly
>fine with getting rid of the even/odd history too.

If I remember past-time discussions right, ELF was the contributing
factor to bump the major number to 2.0 back then; ever since 2.0, no
similarly breakthrough-ing event has occurred.
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