On 5/31/2013 3:56 PM, Wietse Venema wrote: > After the confusion that Postfix 2.10 is not Postfix 2.1, maybe it > is time to change the release numbering scheme. > > We could to the Linux thing where 2.mumble was followed by 3.mumble. > > or we could do it like Sun. After releasing Solaris 2.0 .. 2.6, > they changed the numbering scheme with Solaris 7 which was released > way back in 1998. Nowadays, many software distributions change the > major release number frequently, if not every time. > > If we were to change the release numbering scheme like this with > Postfix then we would immediately be free from the pain of getting > sites to adopt Postfix 3.0, because they would no longer expect the > pain of transitioning from Python 2->3, from perl 5->6 and the like. > The next Postfix release would be 11.0, so 3.x would never happen. > > Wietse >
Maybe what's really needed is to document the version numbers on the postfix.org home page, rather than on the download source code page where no one sees it. ---- The current postfix stable release is $mail_version, released $mail_release_date Stable releases are called "Postfix a.b.c", where a is the major release number, b is the minor release number, and c is the patchlevel. [maybe also list current still-supported past releases] ---- I like the current numbering scheme, and don't think a change is needed. But I'm getting old and set in my ways. Unequivocal no on postfix 3. There's probably less room for confusion if the next release is postfix 11.0, but that may complicate things whenever there is a major incompatible change. But with the careful attention you've always given to backward compatibility, that may never be an issue. Bottom line, I think changing the major version number is far more a marketing decision than a technical one. You get to make the call on those. (just saw rob0's note echoing documenting the version numbers somewhere more likely to be seen. maybe that's all that's needed.) -- Noel Jones
