On Oct 4, 2006, at 1:32 PM, Gary Feldman wrote:
Why is there an x in the filename and not the release tag? Since there should always be a 1-1 mapping between a given (official) tar ball and a given tag, there shouldn't be any difference in the way the version numbers appear (modulo case, and in other situations, some special character mappings).
1) because everyone (myself included) thinks the '.x' part is helpful for end users to understand the compatibility: it helps drive home the point it works with any version of drupal core that matches the "4.7" part, not a specific 4.7.N release. so, that's what they'll see in the version box in the issue queue, what they (already) see in the taxonomy terms on drupal.org, in documentation, etc. since the end users have to see and deal with these files, the '.x' part in the filename should match everything else that's targeted for end users. 2) because we've never used a "-X" in the branch/tag names until now. by that standard, the "DRUPAL-4-7" branch should have been called "DRUPAL-4-7-X", but we've never done it that way, and i don't plan on changing that now. 3) because the tag already doesn't match the tarball's name (e.g. the tag says "DRUPAL-...", but the tarball is called "signup-..."). 4) because i assume (probably wrongly) that contrib maintainers have enough of a clue to be able to understand this stuff. ;) yes, we'll be working on making it more developer-friendly in the near future (e.g. you could go to some form wizard thingy on your project page and say "i want to make a new release, help me with the cvs crap", and it walks you through a few questions, figures out what version you plan to release, and dumps you out the cvs command-line you need to add the right tag, etc, etc). but, in the first instance, i don't think it's too much to ask to understand the basics of this system. furthermore, contrib maintainers that can't be bothered will just create a DRUPAL-4-7 or DRUPAL-5 branch, like they always have, and leave it at that. they'll get nightly snapshots from that branch. so, if they can't figure it out or don't care, they never tag any official releases and are stuck with the "4.7.x-0.0-dev" version of their module forever (which is equivalent to what they get now). -derek