[Haskell-cafe] Why does Haskell PVP have two values for the major version? "A.B..." and a couple other questions

[Roman Cheplyaka]

On 16/12/14 13:00, Erik Hesselink wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 11:49 AM, Roman Cheplyaka <roma at ro-che.info> wrote:
>> On 16/12/14 12:36, Johan Tibell wrote:
>>> On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 2:42 AM, Zach Moazeni <zach.moazeni at gmail.com
>>> <mailto:zach.moazeni at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>     Another question, by far most packages I have encountered either
>>>     lead with a 0 or a 1 for "A". Does that have some bearing on the
>>>     long term stability that package users should expect in the future?
>>>
>>>
>>> This is something that happens a lot in open source, in Haskell or
>>> elsewhere. We We programmers are afraid of calling something 1.0,
>>> because that somehow means "done", which we never (think we) are. :)
>>> Lots of really stable Haskell libraries (e.g. containers) are still on
>>> version 0.X.
>>
>> Upper bounds contribute to this problem, too.
>>
>> Suppose you've decided that 'containers' is stable enough to be at 1.0.
>>
>> Now all packages need to be updated, because they most probably depend
>> on 'containers < 1' or tighter.
>>
>> We saw something similar with text, people got angry.
>>
>> If a library becomes popular before it reaches 1.0, it probably never will.
> 
> I don't understand this. How is bumping 'A' different from bumping
> 'B'? You could just bump 'A' (to 1, for example) instead of 'B' when
> you make an API breaking change, and it's no extra effort for people
> who depend on you.

So I need to wait till I have an API-breaking change in order to mark a
package as stable? That's... ironic.

Also, if the library is stable enough, people would constraint the A
version (e.g. 'containers < 1'), asserting that their package will
probably continue to build even under minor API-breaking changes which
are typical for stable packages. Now, by bumping my A version for a
minor breaking change, I'm acting exactly against their intention,
saying "hey, this is a massive change, you'd better pay attention before
using it". That's not what an actual stable package is supposed to do.

Roman