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In-Reply-To: <3824aef2-8af2-d33a-47e3-c7c66bd6615e@dereferenced.org>
From: Konstantin Kulikov <k.kulikov2@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2021 14:03:26 +0300
Message-ID: <CAD+eXGTYOG19BTeNnLZ22c-kEy+hH_RKxwR6E+jVHrQP0xf3XQ@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [3.15] System change proposal: rename the Alpine 3.15 release to
 Alpine 15
To: Ariadne Conill <ariadne@dereferenced.org>
Cc: ~alpine/devel@lists.alpinelinux.org
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

Please consider using dates for versions, like ubuntu. Every time I
hear "buster", "big sur", "lollipop" or "freebsd 12" I have no idea if
the person is talking about recent version or a dated one.

On Fri, Apr 9, 2021 at 5:31 AM Ariadne Conill <ariadne@dereferenced.org> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> Alpine has traditionally used the major version to represent the current
> ABI version the system uses.  For example, Alpine 1.x was uClibc without
> NPTL, Alpine 2.x was uClibc with NPTL and Alpine 3.x is based on musl.
>
> With the current ABI being evergreen, and our having moved past the 3.14
> release, it no longer makes sense to keep the 3.x designation.  When this
> was previously proposed, the primary request was to postpone this
> discussion until after Alpine 3.14 release.  With the Alpine 3.14 release
> imminent, I believe now is a time to bring this up again.
>
> An argument could have been made to jump to Alpine 4.x with apk-tools 3,
> but we have decided to implement apk-tools 3 out in a way that is
> non-disruptive.  So that argument is now moot, as well.
>
> ## Benefits to Alpine
>
> As the `3.` part of the version is now effectively meaningless, it is
> helpful to downstream consumers of Alpine to have a simplified versioning
> scheme.  For example, postmarketOS can say "based on Alpine 15" instead of
> "Alpine 3.15" which sounds better.
>
> Yes, to be brutally honest, this is an entirely marketing-related thing,
> and there is no technical benefit either way.  However, this versioning
> scheme is more aligned with other Linux distributions.
>
> ## Implementation Plan
>
> Set the version of `alpine-base` to `15_alphaXXXXXXXX` instead of
> `3.15_alphaXXXXXXXX`.
>
> ## Contingency Plan
>
> If we decide we don't want to do this, we just downgrade `alpine-base`
> back to `3.15_alphaXXXXXXXX`.
>
> Ariadne