"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 changelog.
> 
> Which we don't bother keeping (also NEWS), since "bzr log" works so
> nicely.

That's not a changelog, that's a commit log of every source-level commit
made. Far too much detail for a changelog of *user-visible* changes
associated with a release.

> The timestamp should at least replace the patch release number, which
> you agree is-desirable-to increase motonically ;).

I still disagree that a timestamp is the right thing to use there. 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.

> One problem is that we don't actually have "releases". People just
> clone a branch, install, and go.

I agree that's a problem. I think the solution is to start making
releases, with specific version strings, as source tarballs.

James Rowe <jnrowe@gmail.com> writes:

>   Isn't there a bzr web interface that at least supports creating
> tarballs/zips?

Even better: ‘bzr export /tmp/foo.tar.gz’ will create a source tarball
of all the files in the branch's VCS inventory. All we need to do is
start the practice of tagging a release in the VCS, and export the
tarball at that time.

-- 
 \       “Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?” “Well, I think |
  `\   so (hiccup), but Kevin Costner with an English accent?” —_Pinky |
_o__)                                                   and The Brain_ |
Ben Finney