5 ms·

Anyone know what happened circa GCC 5 that changed the version number scheme? It felt like GCC 4 was around forever and now they do whole number increments ever

by tntn 7y ago

Anyone know what happened circa GCC 5 that changed the version number scheme? It felt like GCC 4 was around forever and now they do whole number increments every year or so.

ajross 7y ago
Fashion. GCC isn't a library, so doesn't have the same kind of hard compatibility concerns that major version numbers are supposed to reflect. Other stuff at the same time started doing the same stuff (c.f. Fedora, Firefox, Chrome), so they did too. Other GNU projects did likewise: Emacs spent a few decades to get from 19 to 21, and now all of a sudden we're at 26.
- kristjansson 7y ago
  Yet other libraries/compilers (e.g. CUDA/nvcc) will still bail out if the major version number of gcc is different than they expect...
- avar 7y ago
  > Emacs spent a few decades to get from > 19 to 21, and now all of a sudden we're > at 26. It's just the span between 21 and 22 that took unusually long[1]. The first Emacs 19.* came out in 1993, last 21.* in 2001. So 3 major releases in 8 years, roughly one every 2.5 years. The first Emacs 22.* came out in 2007, and 26.* in 2018, so 5 major releases in 11 years, roughly one every 2.2 years. Whereas 21.* to 22.* took from 2001 to 2007, or around 6 years. Here's an LWN article from 2007 covering why it took so long: https://lwn.net/Articles/234593/ https://lwn.net/Articles/234593/ Not everything gets worse as you get older, except perhaps confirmation bias :) 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Emacs#Release_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Emacs#Release_history
  - ajross 7y ago
    Your subtractions are off by one because you're treating the boundary as a "release" without accounting for the previous inter-release period. Those periods reflect, respectively, TWO major releases in 8 years, and FOUR major releases in 11 years. So things since 22 are about about 50% faster by my reckoning, which is notable but maybe not as much as as my intuition held.
    - avar 7y ago
      If I'm off-by-one I don't know what you're off by claiming "Emacs spent a few decades to get from 19 to 21" :) The 19.7 release came out on May 22, 1993, and 21.1 came out on October 20, 2001. That's 8 years, 4 months and 28 days[1], not decades. Similarly for 22.1 to 26.1, which is a period of 10 years, 11 months and 26 days[2], I took the liberty of rounding that up to 11 years. Perhaps you're under the mistaken impression that Emacs follows some sort of sane version numbering scheme, and that before 19.7 there was such a thing as a 19.6 release, or indeed any other 19.* version, or that before 22.1 there was a 22.0. Neither was the case. 19.7 and 22.1 were the first releases of their respective major versions. > So things since 22 are about about 50% faster > by my reckoning. That's nothing to the goal post being moved by 100% :) You were claiming that Emacs had adopted some modern fashion of more frequent releases. That's simply not the case. They had a really difficult 22.1 release, but otherwise it's been pretty consistent since 1993, way before this supposed fashion took off. 1. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=May+22,+1993+to+October+20,+2001 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=May+22,+1993+to+Octobe... 2. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=June+2,+2007%09to+May+28,+2018 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=June+2,+2007%09to+May+...
ddavis 7y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11580022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11580022

by tntn 7y ago

Anyone know what happened circa GCC 5 that changed the version number scheme? It felt like GCC 4 was around forever and now they do whole number increments every year or so.

ajross 7y ago

Fashion. GCC isn't a library, so doesn't have the same kind of hard compatibility concerns that major version numbers are supposed to reflect. Other stuff at the same time started doing the same stuff (c.f. Fedora, Firefox, Chrome), so they did too. Other GNU projects did likewise: Emacs spent a few decades to get from 19 to 21, and now all of a sudden we're at 26.

kristjansson 7y ago
Yet other libraries/compilers (e.g. CUDA/nvcc) will still bail out if the major version number of gcc is different than they expect...
avar 7y ago
> Emacs spent a few decades to get from > 19 to 21, and now all of a sudden we're > at 26. It's just the span between 21 and 22 that took unusually long[1]. The first Emacs 19.* came out in 1993, last 21.* in 2001. So 3 major releases in 8 years, roughly one every 2.5 years. The first Emacs 22.* came out in 2007, and 26.* in 2018, so 5 major releases in 11 years, roughly one every 2.2 years. Whereas 21.* to 22.* took from 2001 to 2007, or around 6 years. Here's an LWN article from 2007 covering why it took so long: https://lwn.net/Articles/234593/ https://lwn.net/Articles/234593/ Not everything gets worse as you get older, except perhaps confirmation bias :) 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Emacs#Release_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Emacs#Release_history
- ajross 7y ago
  Your subtractions are off by one because you're treating the boundary as a "release" without accounting for the previous inter-release period. Those periods reflect, respectively, TWO major releases in 8 years, and FOUR major releases in 11 years. So things since 22 are about about 50% faster by my reckoning, which is notable but maybe not as much as as my intuition held.
  - avar 7y ago
    If I'm off-by-one I don't know what you're off by claiming "Emacs spent a few decades to get from 19 to 21" :) The 19.7 release came out on May 22, 1993, and 21.1 came out on October 20, 2001. That's 8 years, 4 months and 28 days[1], not decades. Similarly for 22.1 to 26.1, which is a period of 10 years, 11 months and 26 days[2], I took the liberty of rounding that up to 11 years. Perhaps you're under the mistaken impression that Emacs follows some sort of sane version numbering scheme, and that before 19.7 there was such a thing as a 19.6 release, or indeed any other 19.* version, or that before 22.1 there was a 22.0. Neither was the case. 19.7 and 22.1 were the first releases of their respective major versions. > So things since 22 are about about 50% faster > by my reckoning. That's nothing to the goal post being moved by 100% :) You were claiming that Emacs had adopted some modern fashion of more frequent releases. That's simply not the case. They had a really difficult 22.1 release, but otherwise it's been pretty consistent since 1993, way before this supposed fashion took off. 1. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=May+22,+1993+to+October+20,+2001 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=May+22,+1993+to+Octobe... 2. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=June+2,+2007%09to+May+28,+2018 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=June+2,+2007%09to+May+...

ddavis 7y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11580022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11580022