On 8/31/2011 3:44 PM, Brett Cannon wrote:
On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 10:51, Guido van Rossum
wrote: On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 10:45 AM, Paul Moore
wrote: On 31 August 2011 18:33, Antoine Pitrou
wrote: (*) Can we pick a terminology so we all agree that "3.3.3" is a "minor release", "3.3" is a "major release", and "3" an "earthshattering release"? Or other terms -- but something that is both agreed upon and clear enough without explanation. I'm tired of having to clarify minor and major every time I use them out of fear they'll be mistaken for "3" and "3.3".
+1! "Minor" really sounds like a misnomer when applied to feature releases.
How about 3.3.3 -> 3.3.4 is a "minor" release, 3.3 -> 3.4 is a "feature" release and 3 -> 4 is not something we generally talk about (or "compatibility-breaking" or something like that).
I suspect that "minor" for changing the last digit is pretty comprehensible, it's using "major" for 3.3 that confuses people, so let's avoid that term...
Let's avoid minor and major altogether.
2 -> 3: galactic release 3.2 -> 3.3: feature release (also 3 -> 3.1) 3.2.1 -> 3.2.2: bugfix release (also 3.2 -> 3.2.1)
sys.version_info has already made the declaration of what each of the digits represent when it became a named tuple: major, minor, micro (http://hg.python.org/cpython/file/4dcbae65df3f/Python/sysmodule.c#l1273).
And if you don't like the naming, then blame me; http://bugs.python.org/issue4285 was the bug that led to the names and they are what I have always used for all software. After that blame Eric Smith for committing the patch. =)
Great. My fingerprints are on it.