On Tuesday 2011-05-24 20:48, eschvoca wrote: >On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 1:41 PM, Linus Torvalds wrote: >> >> It's not about features. It hasn't been about features for forever. > >Using the date also clearly communicates it is not about features. On the contrary: Whenever a 2.6.x release was set out the door, there was at least one new feature in the cycle. Given the endless manpower that seems to trail Linux, that seems unlikely to change in the near term. On "It is not about features" - it is not /just/ about features - it is also about fixes, which are equally important, and they also warrant a version bump of some sort on their own. Pointing out the obvious, the stable serieses. "Fleeing" to date-based version numbering seems like an excuse for making way for releases without any change whatsoever. (IOW, if there were features/fixes, a non-date based scheme of incremental numbers could indicate them already.) >Me, a nobody end user, would prefer a version number that corresponded >to the date. Something like: > >%y.%m.<stable patch> >%Y.%m.<stable patch> Except that LINUX_KERNEL_VERSION has only 8 bits for each, so 2011 is out of range, which would need to kept in mind. And a 2-digit spec.. nah that does not feel very 100-year proof. (Just look at struct tm.tm_year for the mess 2-digits made technically.) >Then users would know the significance of the number and when a vendor >says they support Linux 11.09 the user will immediately know if they >are up to date. An added issue with that would be that numbers would not increase in same-sized steps anymore and leave gaps. (There would probably be no 11.06 between 11.05 aka 2.6.39 and 11.07-or-so aka 2.6.40) My 2å. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
