[infrastructure] Re: [development] Drupal 4.5 unsupported

[Khalid B]

> Honestly, I think part of the issue with the "stable API" question is that
> Drupal uses version numbers differently from many projects.  The de facto
> standard for version numbers for most projects is Major.Minor.Bug / x.y.z.
>
> Z increases only fix bugs.
> Y increases add features, but don't break backward compatibility with 3rd
> party code.
> X increases, all bets are off.
>
> Witness, for instance, KDE, which has evolved and improved dramatically in
> the 3.y.z cycle, but code for 3.0.0 still (generally) works in 3.5.1.  For
> the upcoming 4.0, howver, there are no "sacred cows" and everything will
> need to be updated.
>
> For Drupal, Y increases, all bets are off.  We technically don't have Y
> releases, just Z and X, but we use both of the first two numbers for the X
> releases.  That throws a lot of people off.  It actually surprised me a
> great deal, although fortunately it didn't affect my plans significantly.
>
> Whatever else we do, we should probably make that clearer right up front.
> It's not inherently a bad development model, just an unconventional one
> that needs to be made clearer.

I do support Larry's view on this.

4.x.x has been around too long, and there is no compatibility for between
its releases.

We need to follow the "If X changes, APIs break", and not Y.