[U-Boot-Users] RFC: U-Boot version numbering

Wolfgang Denk wd at denx.de
Fri Aug 1 17:32:52 CEST 2008


Hello,

I would like to get your general opinion about  changing  the  U-Boot
version numbering scheme.

To be honest, I never really understood myself how this  is  supposed
to work and if the next version should be 1.3.4 or 1.4.0 or 2.0.0, i.
e.  which  changes  / additions are important enough to increment the
PATCHLEVEL or even VERSION number.

I therefor suggest to drop this style of version numbering and change
to a timestamp based version  number  system  which  has  been  quite
successfully  used  by  other  projects  (like  Ubuntu)  or  is under
discussion (for Linux).

My suggestion for the new version numbers is as follows:

VERSION = 1	(at least for the time being)

PATCHLEVEL = current year - 2000

SUBLEVEL = current month

Both PATCHLEVEL and SUBLEVEL shall always be 2 digits (at  least  for
the  next 91+ years to come) so listings for example on an FTP server
shall be in a sane sorting order.

If we accept this system, the next release which probably comes out
in October 2008 would be v1.08.10, and assuming the one after that
comes out in January 2009 would be named v1.09.01

Comments?

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd at denx.de
Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual  hardware.  Hard-
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