It's too many releases now. At some points, the numbers just become noise. I think most people will stick to the LTS releases, but even those come out every two years.
The numbers have become meaningless noise already. This release should've been called 26.1, then 27.0, 27.1, 28.0 and so on. Year.version. How Canonical does it with Ubuntu.
The current numbering scheme is annoying and distracting, bears no information yet is still error prone.
I think you mean "(Year % 100).version". Or is it "(Year - 2000).version"? Pardon me for being overly pedantic, but ever since Y2K it really bugs me when someone refers to a 2-digit number as "the year".
I believe that's by design: applications are encouraged to upgrade often. That's usually a smooth process for standard-conforming applications.
Applications that need to move slower can stick to LTS versions. LTS hopping has become a little bit more viable since the interval has been shortened to two years, i.e., four major versions.
> I believe that's by design: applications are encouraged to upgrade often.
I'm not sure what's your thought process here. I'm not saying they should have a release every 2 years instead of every half a year, but that their numbering scheme is bad.
It makes upgrading harder. If they'd just put the date in the version field, people would know how old the software is (this applies to every software btw not just Java and Ubuntu).
Their current versioning system doesn't help anyone in any imaginale circumstance.
> If they'd just put the date in the version field, people would know how old the software is
Does it tell you anything? If this "software" just bumps the date and never provides anything meaningful it is useful to you? It's about the substance.
The official guidance is very simple and straightforward: upgrade regularly and keep eyes open for the few actual things that could cause trouble. If a project cannot keep up it can always stick to LTS versions. That's it.
When I encounter a version number I mostly want to know either:
- what are the major characteristics of the program
- how old is the program
Traditional software versioning helps in the first case: they bump version after a big event (new feature, rewrite, etc). Date based versioning helps in the second case. (I prefer date based versioning over traditional or semver.) Their numbering system doesn't help anyone in any case. It's just... there. A noise.
E.g. just this article title on HN: "Java 27: What's New?" doesn't tell you whether Java 27 is old or new. "Java 26.1: What's New?" would.
> doesn't tell you whether Java 27 is old or new. "Java 26.1: What's New?" would
How does 26.1 tell you that? Because you "assume" it is a date? It also still doesn't? How do you know the new 1 isn't 26.100?
> Traditional software versioning helps in the first case: they bump version after a big event
They pretend to. It's given most developers headaches in terms of you have to have something to bump the version so either they make something up or never do it and so fails your test either way.
At the end of the day either:
You care: a quick check won't hurt. It's twice a year.
With each new Java release the previous one becomes instantly unsupported (meaning that it receives no security updates), unless you pay Oracle (or another vendor). So you are forced to update if you want security updates (or run only LTS releases, or pay a vendor).
Rust releases are just compiler toolchain, maybe some new syntax features. Java includes the JVM which is subject to way more security issues and needs much more frequent updating.
There are some actual removal of feature too (breaking backwards compatibility on purpose). But those come with deprecation warnings for years before the actual feature is removed. And even then quite often it is still possible to enable with some feature flag for a version or two.
Patches are released continuously. The upstream versions get them immediately and they are then backported to LTS versions. Whether the patches actually become available simultaneously I cannot say without.
The current numbering scheme is annoying and distracting, bears no information yet is still error prone.