[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] Re: Trying to install binary-0.4

[Daniel McAllansmith]

On Thursday 18 October 2007 21:15, you wrote:
> Daniel McAllansmith <dm.maillists at gmail.com> writes:
> > 3. Otherwise, major.minor MUST remain the same (other version components
> > MAY change).
>
> Is it an option to say SHOULD rather than MUST here?

Of course, SHOULD is an option just like MAY is.  But both SHOULD and MAY 
reduce what you can reliably infer from a version number in the same way.

If the rule is SHOULD or MAY, and the freedom is exercised, compatible 
versions of a package will differ in major[.minor] and dependent packages 
will be unable to benefit from their release.  You'll need more maintenance 
work on package dependencies if you want to use the latest and greatest 
versions.

In a similar way, if packages are being retained for a 'long time' to ensure 
dependent packages remain buildable, you are losing garbage collection 
opportunities.


I'm pretty certain SHOULD will be far more socially acceptable than MUST.  I 
can appreciate the fact that people are accustomed to incrementing version 
numbers in liberal ways.

But if you look at version numbers dispassionately in the context of "The goal 
of a versioning system is to inform clients of a package of changes to that 
package that might affect them..." MUST seems a better choice.

Maybe the Right Way of informing clients is full-on metadata and typing of 
packages and maybe we'll have that soon, so maybe a socially acceptable, 
weaker versioning scheme is acceptable.

> There are 
> other reasons for a version bump than breaking compatibility.

Technical reasons?

In some cases a major bump would just be devolving to a minor bump.

Dan