[ntp:hackers] NTP software numbering

Terje Mathisen terje at tmsw.no
Sun Dec 21 11:13:35 UTC 2014


Harlan Stenn wrote:
> Thanks, Greg!

I think we should "bite the bullet" and change the naming to ntp4-*, it 
would definitely make it easier for me here to persuade people that 
4.2.4 is way outdated. :-(

Terje
>
> 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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-- 
- <Terje at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"



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