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

[Richard Smith via llvm-dev]

On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 5:03 PM, Hal Finkel via cfe-dev <
cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Hans Wennborg via cfe-dev" <cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>
> > To: "llvm-dev" <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>, "cfe-dev" <
> cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org>, "LLDB Dev" <lldb-dev at lists.llvm.org>,
> > "openmp-dev (openmp-dev at lists.llvm.org)" <openmp-dev at lists.llvm.org>
> > Cc: "r jordans" <r.jordans at tue.nl>, "Paul Robinson" <
> Paul_Robinson at playstation.sony.com>
> > Sent: Monday, June 13, 2016 6:54:19 PM
> > Subject: [cfe-dev] What version comes after 3.9? (Was: [3.9 Release]
> Release plan and call for testers)
> >
> > Breaking this out into a separate thread since it's kind of a
> > separate
> > issue, and to make sure people see it.
> >
> > If you have opinions on this, please chime in. I'd like to collect as
> > many arguments here as possible to make a good decision. The main
> > contestants are 4.0 and 3.10, and I've seen folks being equally
> > surprised by both.
> >
> > Brain-dump so far:
> >
> > - After LLVM 1.9 came 2.0, and after 2.9 came 3.0; naturally, 4.0
> > comes after 3.9.
> >
> > - There are special bitcode stability rules [1] concerning major
> > version bumps. 2.0 and 3.0 had major IR changes, but since there
> > aren't any this time, we should go to 3.10.
> >
> > - The bitcode stability rules allow for breakage with major versions,
> > but it doesn't require it, so 4.0 is fine.
> >
> > - But maybe we want to save 4.0 for when we do have a significant IR
> > change?
>
> I think that this is the right approach, and we happen to have a natural
> forcing function here: opaque pointer types. I think we should increment
> the major version number when opaque pointer types are here, as it will be
> a major breaking change, and then we'll have a version 4.0. Until then,
> unless something else breaking comes up, 3.10 sounds fine to me.
>

We're talking about version numbers for the entire LLVM project here, which
encompasses a lot more than LLVM IR, and for many parts of which LLVM IR is
utterly irrelevant. I'm not convinced that tying version numbers to
backwards-incompatible changes to IR is reasonable any more, and it doesn't
seem hard to explicitly document the oldest version with which we are
compatible (in fact, we need to do that regardless, whether we say it's
"the same major version" or "everything since 3.0" or whatever else).

Given that our releases are time-based rather than feature-based, I don't
see a distinct major / minor version being anything other than arbitrary,
so I'd suggest we take 4.0 as our next release, 4.1 as the first patch
release on that, 5.0 as the next release after that, and so on.

 -Hal
>
> >
> > - We've never had an x.10 version before; maybe that would be
> > confusing? Perhaps it's simply time to move on (like Linux 2.6.39 ->
> > 3.0 and 3.19 -> 4.0).
> >
> > - Since we do time-based rather than feature-based releases, the
> > major
> > version number shouldn't mean anything special anyway (e.g. big IR
> > changes or not), so 4.0?
> >
> > - Everyone knows that after 9 comes 10, so 3.10 it is. The version is
> > a tuple after all.
> >
> > - Let's go for 4.0 now, and 5.0 after that. Then the "dot"-releases
> > in
> > between would correspond to minor version bumps, which would make
> > sense (and catch up with GCC!).
> >
> > - It's just a number, no big deal; flip a coin or something.
> >
> > What do you think?
> >
> >  - Hans
> >
> >
> >  [1].
> >  http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#ir-backwards-compatibility
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> > cfe-dev at lists.llvm.org
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> >
>
> --
> Hal Finkel
> Assistant Computational Scientist
> Leadership Computing Facility
> Argonne National Laboratory
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