fenics team mailing list archive

[Anders Logg <logg@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 06:06:20PM +0100, Garth N. Wells wrote:
> On 28 October 2011 17:43, Johannes Ring <johannr@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 12:06 PM, Anders Logg <logg@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> Dear all,
> >>
> >> There has been some concern regarding the lack of predictability in
> >> FEniCS releases. Yesterday, some of us at Simula met to discuss what
> >> can be done to improve the situation. The result is the following
> >> draft for a future development model:
> >>
> >>  http://fenicsproject.org/contributing/development_model.html
> >>
> >> Please comment on the draft and suggest corrections.
> >>
> >> The new development model calls for a "release manager" to coordinate
> >> each stable release (currently 1.0). I can volunteer to serve as
> >> release manager this time. I'd be happy to step aside if someone else
> >> is motivated.
> >>
> >> I know some of you, in particular those from Simula who helped draft
> >> the proposal, have already said OK, but please respond anyway for the
> >> record.
> >
> > I also agree that it looks like a good model, however, as a Debian
> > maintainer, I'm a bit worried about the version numbering. For some
> > time ago we agreed (at least some of us) that at least Y should be
> > bumped on interface changes in the DOLFIN shared library. Does this
> > still fit in with this model?

Yes, I think so. In particular, all 1.0.z versions will be compatible
since z > 0 will only include bug fixes.

Then after 1.0.z something, the next *proper* version is 1.1.0, in
which new features can be introduced. I hope there won't be any
interface changes in 1.1.0 either (only added features and new
interfaces) so we don't break the book any time soon.

> > I also don't like version numbers like 1.1-pre1 because it isn't "less
> > than" for instance 1.1-beta1:
> >
> >    $ dpkg --compare-versions 1.1-pre1 lt 1.1-beta1; echo $?
> >   1
> >
> > Can we use something else than "pre"? How about "alpha"?
> >
>
> Good point. Maybe we need to decide on which releases/snapshots we

Yes. alpha works fine too. I can update the image and the text.

> package? Do we want to bother packing snapshots from trunk?

I'm not sure. It seems that packages that go into Debian and Ubuntu
should be stable packages and by definition the snapshots are not
stable.

--
Anders