[cfe-dev] [llvm-dev] [lldb-dev] [Openmp-dev] What version comes after 3.9? (Was: [3.9 Release] Release plan and call for testers)

[Hal Finkel via cfe-dev]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Hans Wennborg via llvm-dev" <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>
> To: "Richard Smith" <richard at metafoo.co.uk>
> Cc: "llvm-dev" <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>, "Chris Lattner" <sabre at nondot.org>, "openmp-dev
> (openmp-dev at lists.llvm.org)" <openmp-dev at lists.llvm.org>, "LLDB" <lldb-dev at lists.llvm.org>, "cfe-dev"
> <cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>, "David Blaikie" <blaikie at google.com>, "Paul Robinson" <Paul_Robinson at playstation.sony.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2016 3:38:06 PM
> Subject: Re: [llvm-dev] [lldb-dev] [cfe-dev] [Openmp-dev] What version comes after 3.9? (Was: [3.9 Release] Release
> plan and call for testers)
> 
> On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 1:17 PM, Richard Smith via lldb-dev
> <lldb-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> >> If 4 seems too confusing, and 40 seems too extreme, how about 10.
> >> Seriously. It seems exactly as good as any other integer to start
> >> counting
> >> rationally, and won't confuse people by looking like a 4.0
> >> release.
> >
> >
> > I think going to 10 or 40 is likely to be confusing, because
> > there'll be two
> > different ways to refer to the same version (people will say 3.10
> > when
> > referring to version 10, or 38 when referring to version 3.8,
> > respectively).
> > This happened to Java in the version 1.6 / version 6 numbering
> > transition.
> >
> > In order to preserve numbering continuity and minimize confusion,
> > if we go
> > from three-component versions (major.minor.patch) to two-component
> > versions
> > (major.patch), I would suggest we go from x.y.z to x+1.0. (This is
> > also
> > consistent with how GCC handled the transition.)
> 
> I haven't followed how this worked out for GCC, but I worry that if
> we
> go from 3.9.0 to 4.0 with the intention of doing 5.0 next, users will
> get confused when we ship 4.1 as a "dot" release instead of a major
> release like we've used to.
> 
> There's also the question of how to practically go from a 3-tuple to
> a
> 2-tuple. Should we drop it from the version string and dir names in
> Clang? Do we drop __clang_patchlevel__ or just leave it at zero? I
> see
> GCC 5.4 is actually versioned as 5.4.0 so maybe that'd be the way to
> do it?

I think that the directory names should match the version string. Both are user-facing. For the macros, I'd rather set the minor version to 0, since "patch level" really is the correct descriptive name for the final digit in our stable releases.

 -Hal

> 
> Cheers,
> Hans
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-- 
Hal Finkel
Assistant Computational Scientist
Leadership Computing Facility
Argonne National Laboratory