2018-08-07 14:01:05 +00:00
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---
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title: "Versioning"
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2022-09-12 08:32:17 +00:00
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date: 2022-09-12T08:00:00Z
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2022-09-12 08:04:53 +00:00
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tags: [XMPP, Community, Free Software, Open Source, Expectations]
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2018-08-07 14:01:05 +00:00
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---
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2022-09-12 08:01:20 +00:00
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*I finally took time to setup a forge and some old drafts turned up. I am
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publishing one of them today as is even though it's 4 years old
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(2018-08-07T13:27:43+01:00). I'm not as grumpy as I was at the time but I
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still think this applies.*
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2018-08-07 14:01:05 +00:00
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2022-09-12 08:01:20 +00:00
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Today I am grumpy at people's expectation of a free software project, about
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versioning and releases. I am mostly concerned about applications rather than
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libraries in this article but I am sure some of this would apply to libraries
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as well.
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2018-08-07 14:01:05 +00:00
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Today we were discussing about versioning and releases in the
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[poezio](https://poez.io) chatroom.
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2022-09-12 08:01:20 +00:00
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Poezio is a console application, a small project maintained by a handful of
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contributors to which I am grateful. I also have a few contributions myself.
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The application is far from perfect but what software is anyway.
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2018-08-07 14:01:05 +00:00
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2022-09-12 08:01:20 +00:00
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The last release -- as of writing -- for the project is `0.11`, published on
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Jan 31, 2017. A bit over 1.5 years ago. Yes, the project is still being
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2018-08-07 14:01:05 +00:00
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actively maintained, but no release is being made for the moment.
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2022-09-12 08:01:20 +00:00
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**No**, not every project releases with the same regularity. **No**, not every
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project has the same understanding of what a release is. Most projects don't
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2018-08-07 14:01:05 +00:00
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have the same constraints.
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2022-09-12 08:01:20 +00:00
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For some projects releases are sacred and I am happy for them. Maintained for
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X months or even years to which will only be applied security fixes or
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critical bug fixes (crashes and the like).
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2018-08-07 14:01:05 +00:00
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2022-09-12 08:01:20 +00:00
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For others, releases are only checkpoints. A way of saying that features are
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being added, bugs are being fixed, and have people talk about it.
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2018-08-07 14:01:05 +00:00
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2022-09-12 09:23:59 +00:00
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There is no global definition of what a release is supposed to be. It is up to
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project maintainers to decide what they want to see in it. They could very
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well make a release every other commit and be happy with it if they wanted to
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be silly. They would still be [semver](https://semver.org) compliant -- one of
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the various versioning scheme defined out there.
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2022-09-12 08:01:20 +00:00
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Nothing also mandates they have to backport bug fixes to the current or
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previous releases, and some projects actually cannot afford such a luxury. All
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of this takes time and that is a really expensive resource in a project.
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2022-09-12 08:15:18 +00:00
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2022-09-12 09:23:59 +00:00
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_Update from the present:_
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_I think the issue I tried to convey in this article isn't that we don't have
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time, or that there's no definition of a release, it's that I'm tired of being
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imposed a vision of the world I don't agree with. What's more, people having
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these expectations often don't even take part in the process of making the
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2023-05-25 12:26:47 +00:00
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project or in the community around it, at any level._
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