Revising Mercurial: The Definitive Guide

[Matt Mackall]

On Wed, 2011-06-01 at 14:06 +0200, Sune Foldager wrote:
> On 2011-05-31 17:00, Matt Mackall wrote:
> >On Tue, 2011-05-31 at 23:45 +0200, Gilles Moris wrote:
> >> On Tuesday 31 May 2011 05:27:32 pm Matt Mackall wrote:
> >> > Be sure to mention to them that 2.0 is due in November.
> >>
> >> Is this because this release will include substantial changes that the first
> >> digit should chnaged, or you don't want a 1.10 ?
> >
> >The latter, of course.
> 
> Excuse me for bringing this up, but isn't it completely arbitrary, then? 

Well not -completely- arbitrary. We are using the decimal system, after
all.

Relative to 1.0, I think our release in November will more than have
earned the name 2.0. Except without the usual stability fears.

Further, looking forward, there's no reason to think we'll ever want to
do anything that resembles the traditional 2.0 in the sense of "huge
leap in features, huge fall in reliability and compatibility", so rather
than wait until we're at 1.43 before deciding the numbers are getting
stupidly big, we're going to switch at the obvious point. 

Relatedly, the Linux kernel has just gone from 2.6.39 to 3.0. They are
much more confused about the norms of counting than we are, but their
development model is quite similar:

http://lwn.net/Articles/445222/

"There's absolutely no reason to aim for the traditional ".0"
problems that so many projects have."

ps: We can also expect 3.0 to come out on Mar 1, 2015.
-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.