RFC: should we remind people to upgrade?

[Matt Mackall]

On Fri, 2012-12-28 at 14:24 +0100, Arne Babenhauserheide wrote:
> Am Sonntag, 23. Dezember 2012, 14:31:32 schrieb Matt Mackall:
> > Here's one way to do that:
> > 
> > - check the timestamp on __version__.py
> > - if > 6 months, report in 'hg version' and tracebacks
> > 
> >         $ touch -d "dec 1 2011" mercurial/__version__.py
> >         $ hg version
> >         Mercurial Distributed SCM (version 2.4.1+64-1c0dfd5f1357+20121222)
> >          please upgrade!
> >         (see http://mercurial.selenic.com for more information)
> > 
> >         Copyright (C) 2005-2012 Matt Mackall and others
> >         This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There
> > is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
> > PURPOSE.
> 
> I don’t like relying on the timestamp. There are too many ways that it could 
> change without affecting mercurial in any other way.

That's actually fine as this is simply an advisory heuristic. People's
clocks can also be off by decades; also not a problem.

But keying off the version number is fine.. until we decide to change
the release scheme. We will eventually do that, simply due to project
maturity. I envision us hitting that point in another 3-5 years. It
might be better to just build a timestamp into __version__.py; my first
version did just that.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.