Talk:Software versioning

message: In addition to the standard Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines:
* Keep all discussion focused on the article page content. Random factual statements are of no use to us. If you are suggesting new content, say so!
* Please use the appropriately titled section below to add comments about specific sections in the article. If you don't find it, please add it.
* Propose a new article section by creating a section title of "Proposed:proposed_title".
* Remember to sign your posts! Add four squiggly (~~~~) characters at the end.
JwD (talk) 01:13, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Software Versioning - talk page guidelines 

message: I am moving some old discussion sections into a "Noise from the past" section that we can eventually archive or delete. Trying to get setup for discussions on how to fix the current Software Versioning page, which needs a lot of work. I'll my thoughts on that later. JwD (talk) 20:51, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Talk page reorg (WIP) 

message: The table is set for discussions on the next steps towards improving the quality of the Software versioning page. There's some things we need to agree on here so that future contributors will know what to add where and whether it's appropriate for this page at all.
# What distinguishes this page from the Version control page?
# How does this page tie in with other related pages ()?
# What core top-level section topics are absolutely necessary?
## What sub-headers are essential to each of those?
# Should we have a table of schemes and organizations/products that use those schemes, rather than adding random content that "X does Y"?
# Is a string like "Windows 10" really a version of anything? 
## IOW: Can we please separate product histories, trademarks and branding, from that which is an actual version of something? For instance, there have been literally thousands of versions of the Windows 10 already.
# Should we mention software publishing channels and packaging tools? Aren't those the opposite book-end from revision control systems?
# Should we promote addition of versioning standards summaries and links to official standards sites over descriptions of the ever increasing numbers of one-offs that come along? 
Any more ideas?
JwD (talk) 22:52, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Future Directions 

message: There are actually two things that are versioned in general:
* Some atomic entity (in CVS/SVN/CMS/... it is the file).
* A collection of atomic entities.
Hence, we should disinguish between the two. Also, for one purpose, a collection may be atomic (i.e. the marketing division @ Microsoft sees the entire operating system as an atomic whole, and thus 'versions' it as Windows XP 2000). Then for the purpose of some developers at Microsoft a small set of files comprices the socket library (which then also gets its version). Finally, Mr. BigProgrammer (lots of pizza), is *the* editor of sock.c. This file is also individually versioned in some versioning system.
My point being: It is not possible to talk generally about versioning in other ways than just specify what is versioned, and the scheme of the numbering system: My car is in its next version after it has had a maintenance service; it would be nice if that version was a higher number than the previous one so that it is easy to talk about it and track it. Since it it my car, I'll adopt a numbering scheme, I think ;-)
Versioned things are:
* A description of things that comprices an atom in our version database. Being an atom, all actions performed on it should be atomic (with regards to the versioning database).
* A set of actions to take to make the next version of the atom.
For version control systems, the description of the atom is the file (and the folder for Subversion). The actions to take are well defined for files and folders by the tool in use, such as 'check-in', 'check-out', 'commit' etc.
What I'm missing from the versioning systems is an easy way to define a collection of atoms (to create a new kind of atom) and a way to treat such a collection exactly the same way as we treat files.
Hawkis 15:44, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Versioning in general 

message: If anybody can track down some history of versioning schemes, it would be interesting to know.  For example, back in the good old days, "everybody knew" that version numbers were just a series of integers separated by periods.  (Not decimal points!)  I know from personal experience that this convention pre-dates the mid-1970's, but where did it come from?  As more people came in to the computing field without significant contact with their predecessors, there was an explosion of interpretations of the meaning of version numbers.  (Such as the idea that they are floating point numbers, adding letters, leading zeros, etc.)
I don't have any cites for any of this, but I'm thinking the origin of version numbers is probably somewhere in the late 50's / early 60's, like so much other fundamental computer technology.
130.167.237.185 (talk) 19:47, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed: History of versioning 

message: "If changes are made between, say, 1.3rc4 (a release candidate) and the production release of 1.3, then that release, which asserts that it has had a production-grade level of testing in the real world, in fact contains changes which have not necessarily been tested in the real world at all.[clarification needed]"
This doesn't make sense at all. Doesn't seem to be a complete sentence.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by an unspecified IP address 2014-08-10T08:09:40‎
I agree, the whole section needs an overhaul, and that first sentence in the third paragraph is patently false.
JwD (talk) 01:49, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Reworked. JwD (talk) 20:36, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change significance 

message: scope and size better sited at target Widefox; talk 12:12, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merge with [[Software release train]] 

message: The "Schemes" section is fairly long. I wonder if moving it to its own page could help make it and "Software versioning" as a whole easier to read? Llama Linguist (talk) 02:37, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal: Split "Schemes" into separate article 

message: "Daemonite: The science of version numbering". is no longer available at blog.daemon.com.au. 
I suggest pointing to the waybackmachine: The science of version numbering No-bug404 (talk) 14:45, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation 10 no longer available 

message: Mention Android along with Debian.
Mention if fun names might seem smart, but require others to have to use lookup tables to determine which version is older.
Also mention e.g., if names get dropped when it become too much of a hassle.
Jidanni (talk) 15:18, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Names vs. numbers