It makes determining if a ghc build was a dev build vs a tagged release much easier. Odd == I’m using a dev build because it reports a version like majormajor.odd.time stamp right ? — we still donthat with dev /master right?
At some level any versioning notation is a social convention, and this one does have a good advantage of making dev builds apparent while letting things like hackage head have coherent versioning for treating these releases sanely?
Otoh. It’s all a social construct. So any approach that helps all relevant communities is always welcome. Though even numbers are nice ;)
Hi devs,
I understand that GHC uses the same version numbering system as the Linux kernel did until 2003(*), using odd numbers for unstable "releases" and even ones for stable ones. I have seen this become a point of confusion, as in: "Quick Look just missed the cutoff for GHC 9.0, so it will be out in GHC 9.2" "Um, what about 9.1?"
Is there a reason to keep this practice? Linux moved away from it 18 years ago and seems to have thrived despite. Giving this convention up on a new first-number change (the change from 8 to 9) seems like a good time.
I don't feel strongly about this, at all -- just asking a question that maybe no one has asked in a long time.
Richard
(*) I actually didn't know that Linux stopped doing this until writing this email, wondering why we needed to tie ourselves to Linux. I coincidentally stopped using Linux full-time (and thus administering my own installation) in 2003, when I graduated from university.
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