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by jabl 42 days ago
The Linux kernel is another example. The 2.5 development cycle (which led to the stable 2.6 series) was brutally long, and distros resorted to back-porting new features into their own kernels based on the stable 2.4 series that they provided to their users, creating all kinds of excitement. After 2.6.0 was released, Linus basically went nope, not gonna do that again.
2 comments
SAI_Peregrinus 41 days ago
And this is why I prefer a "hybrid" version scheme between CalVer & SemVer: A series number to allow LTS releases, a period, a hyphenated datestamp, optional "flag" letters "B" for breaking changes, "S" for security fixes, "F" for new features (more than one can be present, always in that order), and if more than one release is made on the same day the second & subsequent releases get a period followed by a release number starting from 1.

E.g. 3.2026-05-01FS for a first release of the day with a new feature & security fix to release series 3, 2.2026-05-01S backporting the security fix to release series 2 (LTS, say), 3.2026-05-02 for a "bug fixes & performance improvements" release, 3.2026-05-02S.1 for a security fix to the "bug fixes & performance improvements" release.

Like SemVer, this lets users know when there are breaking changes to an API or such, which releases contain security fixes, which releases have new features, and allows multiple simultaneous release versions for LTS support. Like CalVer it lets users know how recent a release is, and makes it pretty easy to figure out what the release schedule was historically (and likely still is) by comparing versions.

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bluGill 42 days ago
Are there any large projects that are older than 25 years that didn't go through that? The time based release thing as been recommended for about 25 years (can anyone get real data?), so newer projects may just be using it without knowing the pain, but for older projects it seems like they all went through it at least once.
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cogman10 42 days ago
Arguably Perl. And it also shows the real risk of sidelining everything for one big bang release.

I think they are just now back on to a regular release cadence, but they weren't for a long time.

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