"W. Trevor King" <wking@drexel.edu> writes:
> On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 12:54:05AM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
> > "W. Trevor King" <wking@drexel.edu> writes:
> >
> > > On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 10:36:26PM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
> > > > Please, no. Timestamps aren't version strings, that's conflating
> > > > two pieces of information with very different meanings.
> > > > Correlating the two is the job of a [NEWS file].
>
> > If you want a monotonically-increasing indicator of which revision
> > we're up to, that's immediately available with the revision number
> > from VCS on the main branch. That also has the advantage of
> > producing consecutive numbers for each revision, by definition.
>
> But not during branch-switches, while my method skips large regions,
> but probably increases during any reasonable branch-switch.
I've read this several times now, and I don't see what it's saying.
The assumption I'm making is that there is a single canonical “main
branch”, from which releases will be made. The version number set in
that branch is the one which determines the version of Bugs Everywhere
as a whole.
The revision number is only useful in the context of the branch, so it
only matters when comparing versions within a branch. When you switch
between branches, if you're interested in the revision number you'll
still need to know which branch you're talking about.
Switching between branches doesn't change the canonical version string.
> For example, when I upgraded to rich root to pull Ben's patch, I'm not
> sure if Chris upgraded the trunk and merged my branch, or just ditched
> the trunk and cloned my branch. Using actual bzr revision numbers
> would make switching branches that either wrong (in the case of rev-id
> decreases) or confusing (in the case of a single non-consecutive
> increase).
This, then, is an argument for not having the revision number in the
version string at all. The version then becomes a more traditional
“major.minor.patch” tuple, and is only ever updated when some release
manager of the canonical branch decides it's correct to do so.
If we use the ‘bzr version-info --format=python > foo_version.py’
command in some build routine, the branch's revision number will be
available directly within Python by importing that module. That would
allow it to be output in some UI, if that's what you're interested in
seeing.
--
\ “Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands |
`\ it.” —Albert Einstein |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
