[darcs-users] odds/evens?

[Isaac Dupree]

On 07/13/10 13:57, Matthias Kilian wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 09:53:35AM +0100, Eric Kow wrote:
>> =============================     =======  ========  =================
>> task                              current  odd/even  comments
>> =============================     =======  ========  =================
> [...]
>> Name ongoing work in HEAD         2.7      2.9
>> after release branch has been
>> cut
>
> Are you really about to have two actively maintained branches (even
> aka stable vs. odd aka development)?

Darcs already does this!  We make a release branch some time before the 
actual release of the next stable release, while leaving HEAD open for 
commits as normal, and make the betas and rcs off of this branch; and we 
even provide updates on the stable branch after stable-release as 
necessary (such as we released 2.4.1).

Eric's proposal is only to number things differently.  In fact, the 
numbering proposed is such that making a stable branch actually looks 
like changing HEAD's version number but letting the stable branch remain 
the same and be called "the stable branch".

Eric's proposal is similar to GHC's numbering scheme except that for 
stable-branch-before-stable-release GHC is numbered e.g. 6.8.0.date 
(where date is a number like 20080913), and the first stable release is 
numbered 6.8.1; Eric's proposal is just like this except that the 
stable-branch-before-stable-release is still numbered under the 
preceding-odd-number prefix.

-Isaac