[development] new CVS branch/tag conventions (was Re: tagadelic 'backport' for 4.7)

[Gary Feldman]

Derek Wright wrote:
>
> 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
I understand how people who've been working on Drupal for a while might 
come to that conclusion, but I don't agree.  The .x could just as easily 
be interpreted as eXperimental or eXtension (both conventions I've seen 
used before).  It's the type of thing that will trip up many users, and 
not be of much help to others.  The people who care about details will 
worry about it, and the people who don't care about details will just 
make the same assumptions with or without the .x.  At a minimum, it's 
one more thing that they'll have to learn in order to join the club, and 
it doesn't get around the fact that they still need to worry about 
incompatibilities between modules. 
> 4) because i assume (probably wrongly) that contrib maintainers have 
> enough of a clue to be able to understand this
Understanding isn't the issue.  It's having to remember it, or being 
slowed down or tripped up by annoying minor inconsistencies.  I 
understand why some command line tools use two dashes for long option 
names and others use just one, but that doesn't mean I never type the 
wrong one.
> ...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
No, it's not too much to ask, but then it's also not too much to ask for 
an explanation.

Gary