[Bioperl-l] Bioperl versioning

[Nathan Haigh]

--snip--
> Ok, I'm going to go ahead and call it 1.52_01 then. Surely 1.60 will be 
> treated higher than 1.4? Anyway, we can cross that bridge when we get 
> there, but this seems appropriate now.
>
>
> Cheers,
> Sendu.
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>   
Just been having a think about this versioning. Does this work well and
is it intuitive with versioning the official 1.5.2 developer release and
also the 1.6 stable release? I'd like to put forward the following
versioning scheme for consideration (most is the same as what it is now,
but with some clarification - hopefully):
major-version . minor-version sub-version _ developer-release-version
RC-version

The sub-version represents bug-fixes and possibly some minor feature
enhancements with no API changes.
The minor-version represents some significant feature enhancements/API
changes/bug fixes.
The major-version represents significant rewrites of Bioperl.

For an RC of a developer release the version would have _0x (where x=the
RC number)
For a non RC of a developer release the version would have _10
For an RC of a stable release the version would have _0x (where x=RC number)
Fo a non RC of a stable release the version would not have the
underscore suffix

Therefore I would see the following $VERSION being applied:
1.5.2 RC1            = 1.52_01
1.5.2 RC2            = 1.52_02
1.5.2 RC3            = 1.52_03
1.5.2                = 1.52_10
1.6 RC1              = 1.60_01
1.6 RC2              = 1.60_02
1.6                  = 1.60
1.6.1 RC1            = 1.61_01
1.6.1                = 1.61

This should satisfy the requirement of CPAN for having underscores in
versions to indicate a developer release, which here is a Bioperl
release with an odd minor version number or any RC whether it be of a
developer release or a stable release. This should mean that we could
have the RC's on CPAN, but by default, CPAN would only install the
latest "non developer release" (i.e. the last package without an
underscore in the version).

If we are going ahead with the new $VERSION scheme (as it currently is
in HEAD), we should, for the sake of clarity,  try to talk about Bioperl
1.52 instead of Bioperl 1.5.2 and make an effort to sync the
documentation with regards to this.

Nath