On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 10:22 AM, Michal Kubecek
On Monday, 24 April 2017 10:02 Simon Lees wrote:
Well hopefully from now we will continue to go up in a sensible fashion ... and in 10 years time hopefully looking back 15 will have been the sensible choice.
When you take a look at how many times the release scheme changed in last 10 years (each time with "we have it right this time and it's going to stay like this"), do you really believe in the vision I quoted above?
Personally, I find it more likely that in 10 years, people are going to see this "Leap Back" episode just one in a row of similar ad hoc changes, each having been presented as being set in stone for future generations. But, yes, I agree that in 10 years, nobody is probably going to be still angry about this particular change.
In our software build and install scripts we check for the openSUSE version. We use the information in /etc/os-release. When openSUSE went from 13.3 to 42.1, it was no logical issue because the version number increased. So simple tests of > or < still worked. The first big issue we had was with Tumbleweed, which uses the date of release as the version. It resulted in us having to track Tumbleweed things one way, and openSUSE/Leap another way. Nonetheless, within each version numbering system, the version numbers increased. Is there another package or distribution that has used an occasionally decreasing version number? An example of Red Hat was given. But they changed the product name at the same time. They did not decrease the number of a product that had the same name. I would imagine that a version of 15 might make some sort of sense if Leap is dropped. Perhaps it is time to disassociate the distribution name (which may or may not include a number) from the software release version. Microsoft have had this for a long time. The '10' in Windows 10 is not used at the code/packaging level to describe/detect the software version. If the VERSION (or VERSION_ID?) in /etc/os-release is a numerically increasing number, I am okay. If it decreases, then maintenance becomes a bit harder. The PRETTY_NAME can be whatever, with whatever numbers or text makes you happy. But the actual version number should increase. Isn't this type of fragmentation between Linux distros one of the reasons software products that support Linux usually only support a couple distros? How many 3rd party software suppliers will have to address this non-standard openSUSE-unique behavior? -- Roger Oberholtzer -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org