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by delroth 3152 days ago
It is just as disingenuous as saying "details don't matter". bonzini's comment was saying a line needs to be drawn, and I agree with that. It's pretty clear the line needs to not include "breaking on version number updates", less clear what it also needs to not include.
1 comments
_jal 3152 days ago
No, in fact, it is pretty obvious, at least to people doing kernel dev.

The contract in this case is that there will always be a version number, and anyone who expects it not to change is an idiot or just being obtuse.

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bonzini 3152 days ago
Well, I do kernel dev. I am the maintainer of KVM. :)

> anyone who expects it not to change is an idiot or just being obtuse

If this was the case, Microsoft would have never had to skip from Windows 8 to Windows 10 (see below in another comment: "starts with Windows 9" was used in the wild to detect Windows 95/98).

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_jal 3152 days ago
Eh? The version number changed. MSFT just changed to something not completely predictable in advance. Or am I missing your point?
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bonzini 3152 days ago
They _had_ to change it to "10" because there was existing code in the wild that misbehaved for a hypothetical Windows 9.
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_jal 3152 days ago
I still don't get it; either I'm remarkably dense today, or there's a disconnect. I wrote:

> anyone who expects it not to change

And you appear to be using an example of a version-change curiosity as a counterexample. It is not a counterexample, because the version number in question changed from 8 to 10. In my original formulation, anyone who claimed to worry that the number would stay 8 forever was being an idiot or being obtuse.

I think that holds up. It was not part of my comment, but someone who expected it to be 9 would not be an idiot or obtuse, because that would have been a reasonable guess, absent additional information. They were expecting it to change but were surprised by an exceptional circumstance.

But this is getting a bit silly; there may be someone out there who thinks version numbers should be immutable across versions, but I bet they're pretty lonely. It was an example picked up while making a wider point.

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