Well there’s a joke somewhere.
Less has my favorite version numbering system. Sequential.
Latest stable release: Version 598
Less has my favorite version numbering system. Sequential.
Latest stable release: Version 598
Perfect for things like Ubuntu, pytz, and ca-certificates.
Less for something like a library who’s API could change and break your implementation.
It's useful for Ubuntu, because each Ubuntu release is a hodgepodge of lots of unrelated updates. Some will be breaking, some will be fine.
Considering most places I've worked at just bump the minor number in perpetuity, a date-based version conveys a bit more info. Also so much easier to know when it's going out if you have a release cycle (e.g. you don't have to guess what date 3.12354.0 is going to prod, you would know it already from a version like 2021.12.25).
You can't do the same with git commit hashes because you can't sort them based on the hash alone. I have no idea how to compare deadbeef and cafebabe without checking the code itself.
Especially, like, what if you release a bugfix for a significantly old version? Do you give it an up-to-date number? Do you not give it a number at all?
(Also I see a 581.2 on that page.)
Upgrading is the problem in this scenario. Let's say 727 is the modern version. If users upgrade to 728, when 728 is based on 402, we have an issue.
No, we don’t.
If a user that was happily using version 727 is now on a version that's almost identical to 402, they're now missing 300 versions' worth of code changes. You don't see how that's an issue? What if they were using functionality from that? Upgrading to 728 has removed all this code they were depending on!
If everyone follows your advice to upgrade, then everyone has this problem. Including you, unless you ignore your own advice.
lol. That’s not how this works.
If I give my bugfix to 402 a version number, it will be 728.
So if that's not what happens, what does?
Do I give it no version number?
Am I not allowed to release a bugfix?
Surely you can see why both of those options cause unnecessary problems.
If you have something else in mind, you need to say it.
And it's not really a version numbering system that you're advocating for at that point, it's a strict rule about linear releases.