[Sugar-devel] Proposal of dotted activity version number

[Gonzalo Odiard]

On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 9:49 PM, C. Scott Ananian <cscott at laptop.org> wrote:

> If you're going to use something other than simple integers, I suggest
> either:
>
> a) a string of dotted integers.  You should *always* be able to
> subdivide a release if necessary.
> Strings like "peru" belong (in my opinion) in release notes or the
> name of the activity or anywhere else.  They don't tell you anything
> about version ordering.  If the problem is that you can't put a new
> release between 0 and 1, why are you creating a system that causes the
> same problem, except between 0.0.0 and 0.0.1?
>
>
Yes, you are right. The string part don't tell us anything about version
ordering
The idea is use a string of dotted integers to indicate the order and the
string part only to indicate a customization.
Why? We have activity groups today for this.
Because a teacher, a kid or a technician from Uruguay can see Peru have a
customization, download, test and use.
But the customization part does not imply order because it's not logic use
the alphabetic order (Peru < Ruanda < Uruguay?)
Then I plan to ignore the customization when I  compute the order.


> b) use the debian version numbering system *exactly*.  It has been
> shown to work in the real world, and it is well documented.  The
> current proposal is neither (yet).  We do not need to burden the world
> with yet another ad-hoc numbering system.  Please build on other
> people's work instead of re-inventing the wheel.  Just because the
> debian system has features you don't *think* you need (yet) is not a
> reason to bypass it.  There are great benefits to sharing a commons.
>
>
I agree with not reinvent the wheel, but not with using the debian versions.
Why not the Fedora, Gentoo or OSX?
If you want, we will be using the linux kernel numbering system :)



> Of course, my preference is to keep the existing simple integers and
> solve the version precedence problem in other ways.  Perhaps important
> activities should be encouraged to "count by ten" when increasing
> verson numbers -- or perhaps the tight dependency of Browse on a given
> Sugar version should be fixed.
>
>
Integer number does not solve the problems we have today.
Not the problems of the developers, but the downstreams.
I am working with OLPC fixing Browse in sugar 0.84. The version we are using
is Browse 108, but I cant release Browse 109 because already exists.
The same problem we have, will have Dextrose or anybody who maintains a
older branch.
And "count by ten" it's not a good idea.



> A truely forward-thinking replacement would replace the integer
> version numbers with a git-style version tree.  Just say, "this
> activity replaces the activity bundle with manifest hash abcdef".
> That is more decentralized, and more accurate.  Each activity
> could/should contain a list of URLs describing the canonical source
> for both itself (authoritative) and its (say) 10 immediate parents
> (non-authoritative).  This proposal could be elaborated -- and it
> paves the way for a truely decentralized activity repository, where
> activities are created *and hosted* by children *on their own
> machines*.  (Isn't this stil the vision of Sugar?)
>

No. Git it's fantastic but it's not the solution to all.
That would be a clear example of "Second system effect" [1]

Gonzalo


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect


>  --scott
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