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Am I alone in being bemused and amused by this: Version 1.0.1 (Beta stability) Surely the main point of a 1.0 release is "stability" and to no longer be "be

by sambeau 12y ago

Am I alone in being bemused and amused by this: Version 1.0.1 (Beta stability) Surely the main point of a 1.0 release is "stability" and to no longer be "beta"?

stephenr 12y ago
To me it just follows on the ridiculousness of the Node community in general. A tool at version 0.10 and everyone screams about how stable it is and can't wait to bet their business on it. A bunch of people are unhappy and fork the project, and make the initial version 1.0, but make a point of saying (despite not using a related version number/identifier) that it's beta. Realistically it sounds like both projects should be at v0.9.x.
- namuol 12y ago
  This seems like a step away from "ridiculous" to me. Declaring something as 1.0 means that any 1.X releases are going to be backwards-compatible with the 1.0 spec. This is objectively different than versioning something 0.X, which implies that the baseline spec is not finalized. Calling something "Beta", however, just means that a feature-complete major version is still being actively developed (i.e. new minor features and bugfixes). In other words "1.0 Beta" just means "Stable spec, active codebase".
  - stephenr 12y ago
    So why is it called "1.0.1" (and now 1.0.1 on the homepage) and not "1.0.0-beta" ?
    - sturadnidge 12y ago
      The 1.0.0 release was called 1.0.0 - there has been a patch release since. Pretty much any software I can think of lists the latest release on the homepage rather than linking to a static version, but you're right it's a little confusing that specifying a version in the querystring doesn't actually appear to link directly to that version. EDIT: confusing if the intention of the iojs team was to have the querystring actually mean something... they may well not have that intention, in which case meh :)
      - stephenr 12y ago
        My point wasn't about the patch version it's about the software being called "beta" while the version doesn't reflect that at all. If the api is fixed and its just bug fixes before release why isn't this 1.0.0-beta or -rcN, with a 1.0.0 (a vanilla version is always considered higher than one with an identifier like "-beta" or "-rc1"
        sturadnidge 12y ago
        Sure, but that's more of a reflection on the convention (some might say 'rationality' ;) of associating a single vector of 'production status' with a number beginning with 1. Again, this is a semver thing, not an iojs thing.
        stephenr 12y ago
        They chose to use semver and apparently even seem to understand the concept of identifying non-stable versions: https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/28 https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/28 But apparently "beta" equals "stable" to these people.
sturadnidge 12y ago
Not really, at least according to semver (which is what iojs uses). Stability of the API is denoted by a 1.x.x, it isn't necessarily an indication of the quality of the implementation, beta or otherwise. Node 0.12 was always being referred to as 'pretty much the 1.0 API', not calling it 1.x.x was a kind of 'get out of jail free' card in my opinion. So i'm glad the iojs team have least drawn a line in the sand and declared their API stable.
- M2Ys4U 12y ago
  1.x is not really about stability either. To quote from the semver FAQ: >How do I know when to release 1.0.0? >If your software is being used in production, it should probably already be 1.0.0. If you have a stable API on which users have come to depend, you should be 1.0.0. If you're worrying a lot about backwards compatibility, you should probably already be 1.0.0.

by sambeau 12y ago

Am I alone in being bemused and amused by this: Version 1.0.1 (Beta stability) Surely the main point of a 1.0 release is "stability" and to no longer be "beta"?

stephenr 12y ago

To me it just follows on the ridiculousness of the Node community in general. A tool at version 0.10 and everyone screams about how stable it is and can't wait to bet their business on it. A bunch of people are unhappy and fork the project, and make the initial version 1.0, but make a point of saying (despite not using a related version number/identifier) that it's beta. Realistically it sounds like both projects should be at v0.9.x.

namuol 12y ago
This seems like a step away from "ridiculous" to me. Declaring something as 1.0 means that any 1.X releases are going to be backwards-compatible with the 1.0 spec. This is objectively different than versioning something 0.X, which implies that the baseline spec is not finalized. Calling something "Beta", however, just means that a feature-complete major version is still being actively developed (i.e. new minor features and bugfixes). In other words "1.0 Beta" just means "Stable spec, active codebase".
- stephenr 12y ago
  So why is it called "1.0.1" (and now 1.0.1 on the homepage) and not "1.0.0-beta" ?
  - sturadnidge 12y ago
    The 1.0.0 release was called 1.0.0 - there has been a patch release since. Pretty much any software I can think of lists the latest release on the homepage rather than linking to a static version, but you're right it's a little confusing that specifying a version in the querystring doesn't actually appear to link directly to that version. EDIT: confusing if the intention of the iojs team was to have the querystring actually mean something... they may well not have that intention, in which case meh :)
    - stephenr 12y ago
      My point wasn't about the patch version it's about the software being called "beta" while the version doesn't reflect that at all. If the api is fixed and its just bug fixes before release why isn't this 1.0.0-beta or -rcN, with a 1.0.0 (a vanilla version is always considered higher than one with an identifier like "-beta" or "-rc1"
      - sturadnidge 12y ago
        Sure, but that's more of a reflection on the convention (some might say 'rationality' ;) of associating a single vector of 'production status' with a number beginning with 1. Again, this is a semver thing, not an iojs thing.
        stephenr 12y ago
        They chose to use semver and apparently even seem to understand the concept of identifying non-stable versions: https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/28 https://github.com/iojs/io.js/issues/28 But apparently "beta" equals "stable" to these people.

sturadnidge 12y ago

Not really, at least according to semver (which is what iojs uses). Stability of the API is denoted by a 1.x.x, it isn't necessarily an indication of the quality of the implementation, beta or otherwise. Node 0.12 was always being referred to as 'pretty much the 1.0 API', not calling it 1.x.x was a kind of 'get out of jail free' card in my opinion. So i'm glad the iojs team have least drawn a line in the sand and declared their API stable.

M2Ys4U 12y ago
1.x is not really about stability either. To quote from the semver FAQ: >How do I know when to release 1.0.0? >If your software is being used in production, it should probably already be 1.0.0. If you have a stable API on which users have come to depend, you should be 1.0.0. If you're worrying a lot about backwards compatibility, you should probably already be 1.0.0.