[ntp:hackers] NTP software numbering

Harlan Stenn stenn at nwtime.org
Sat Dec 20 22:01:46 UTC 2014


Thanks, Greg!

Sent from my iPhone - please excuse brevity and typos

> On Dec 20, 2014, at 7:20 AM, Greg Troxel <gdt at ir.bbn.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Harlan Stenn <stenn at nwtime.org> writes:
> 
>> We decided to change the version numbering system after 4.2.8 was released.
>> 
>> Most recently, we've used ntp-PROTO.MAJOR.MINORpPOINT .
> 
> So you can call it proto, but people who see version numbers see
> W.X.YpZ.
> 
>> This sucks because people don't see much of a change between 4.2.6 and
>> 4.2.8.
> 
> Also because it uses a p instead of a dot, making it less likely to
> trivially work with all packaging systems without hand coding.
> 
> (This may be ok, but I've had to do a lot of hand coding to work around
> packages that think they're special and should have odd version
> numbers.)
> 
>> So we thought about going back to ntpPROTO-MAJOE.MINOR.POINT.
>> 
>> This means that the next -stable release will be ntp4-5.0, and the next
>> -dev release for ntp4-5.0 will be ntp4-4.9.0.
>> 
>> This kinda sucks too, because folks don't like to mix - and . in their
>> version numbers.
> 
> It's worse that that.  "ntp4-4.9.0" is version 4.9.0 of the "ntp4"
> package.   You can declare it otherwise, but that's how packaging
> systems see it. Basically, the rule is that the stuff before the first -
> is the package name and the stuff after is the version.
> 
> There are two consumers of version numbers.  One is people, and the
> other is packaging systems.   Packaging systems have to interpret
> version numbers from tons of packages and be able to do comparisons to
> determine what's newer.
> 
> Even worse, going from ntp-4.x.y to ntp4-5.0 is viewed as a change in
> the package name.
> 
>> Before we get too far down the road, I'm thinking about something
>> halfway between these two, as we don't seem to really go thru many major
>> and minor releases in any given protocol lifetime.
>> 
>> So I'm thinking about having the next -stable release of NTP after
>> ntp-4.2.8 be ntp-4.4.0, so the first -dev release on the way to
>> ntp-4.4.0 would be ntp-4.3.0.  No more XXXpNN, the bottom number would
>> be the point release.
>> 
>> So the numbering would be:
>> 
>> ntp-PROTO.RELEASE.POINT
>> 
>> and we'd continue having even number releases be -stable, and odd number
>> releases be -dev.
> 
> That's much saner.  I would say that in
> 
>  ntp-4.3.1 (to pick an example with different numbers)
> 
> that 4 is the major version, 3 minor and 1 point/patch.   That's just
> how it is to someone reading version numbers who hasn't gotten the memo
> about why ntp is odd.  Or rather there are just 3 numbers and no
> particular semantics should be assumed.
> 
> But that's ok, because the only real operation packaging systems have to
> do is "is this version greater than this other version", and to expect
> ntp-x.y.z.tar.gz to unpack into a directory ntp-x.y.z.
> 
> And, there's no reason version components have to be single digits.
> quagga is at 0.99.23.1.  THere's some goofiness about the mythical 1.0,
> but the big version number has not caused complaints or trouble.
> 
> The second proposal also avoids the package name change.



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