[ntp:hackers] ntp release numbers

Brad Knowles brad at stop.mail-abuse.org
Wed Oct 12 03:05:22 PDT 2005


At 4:23 AM +0000 2005-10-12, Harlan Stenn wrote:

>>  	When are these published patches generated, and under what
>>  circumstances?  Does this mean that the third digit would be
>>  incremented with every single change that is recorded in BitKeeper?
>
>  Sort of, with every change to ntp-stable.  Not ntp-dev.

	How often do we make changes to ntp-stable?  Do we generate a new 
snapshot every night?  If so, then I think that incrementing the 
third digit with each snapshot would probably not be such a great 
idea.

>  Because we do not currently "publish" anything except the ntp-stable
>  release and then any snapshot tarballs from ntp-stable.  There is no
>  easy way to show if folks are running the released ntp-stable or one of
>  the follow-on snapshot releases of ntp-stable.

	Fair enough.  I can see that we need some sort of mechanism of 
determining precisely which version of ntp-release/ntp-stable someone 
is running, and I think we should differentiate this from ntp-dev.


	If we change ntp-stable relatively infrequently, then 
incrementing the third digit should be sufficient.  If we change it 
frequently, I'm not sure what would work best.  And I'm not sure 
precisely what we should take to be "infrequently" versus 
"frequently".  Is ten times a year too often?  Twenty?  I dunno.

	But I'd like to see an ISO date-based scheme for ntp-dev.


	I'm thinking of something similar to the FreeBSD or postfix 
release numbering schemes, but not quite exactly the same as either. 
Maybe X.Y.0 would always be an official "ntp-release" version, 
whereas X.Y.Z (where Z>0) would be an ntp-stable update, and 
X.Y-yyyymmdd would be an ntp-dev snapshot.

	People would be able to tell at a glance which version you were 
running, and would be able to easily determine when that version was 
created, and therefore which code was or was not included.

>  See https://ntp.isc.org/bin/view/Main/ReleaseNumberingScheme for more
>  info or discussion.

	I've read that several times in the past.  Have you already made 
changes here to describe your proposed scheme?

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.


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