Friday, March 30, 2012

What happened to pre-release versions?

In RFC 175, we proposed to introduce two new things for Core Release 5. One was a change to the version syntax to support pre-release versions and the other was to introduce a VersionRange class to provide a common implementation of version range operations. When the Core Release 5 spec was completed, it included the VersionRange class but did not include pre-release version support. So, what happened?

Pre-release, aka. snapshot, versions seemed like a good idea when first proposed. From the RFC:
During development of a bundle (or package), there is a period of time where the bundle has not been declared final. That is, the bundle has a planned version number once final, but that version number is not practically consumed until the bundle has been declared final. However, during development of the bundle, it must have a version number. This version number must be larger than the version number of the previous final version of the bundle but less than the version number intended for the bundle once final.
There are several usage patterns for version numbers which have emerged to deal with this problem. For example, some use an odd/even version number for the minor version to differentiate between development versions and final (release) versions. Some also place the build timestamp in the qualifier to distinguish all built versions of a bundle, but there is no clear marking which is the final version so dependents cannot mandate a final version.
So we proposed a change to the version syntax to open up space between version numbers so that before the unqualified version (e.g. 1.2.3) there would be pre-release versions. So 1.2.3-snapshot would be a lower version number than 1.2.3. It would have a total ordering over all versions and be backwards compatible with existing version syntax.

1.2.3- < 1.2.3-x < 1.2.3 = 1.2.3. < 1.2.3.x

However, we also had to work properly with existing version range syntax. For example, is the version 1.2.3-snapshot included in the range [1.2.3,2.0.0)? We defined two rules for this.
  1. If a version range having an endpoint specified without a qualifier (e.g. [1.2.3,2.0.0)) would include a version with a release qualifier of the empty string (e.g. 1.2.3), then the version range must also include that version when identified as pre-release (e.g. 1.2.3-x).
  2. If a version range having an endpoint specified without a qualifier (e.g. [1.2.3,2.0.0)) would exclude a version with a release qualifier of the empty string (e.g. 2.0.0), then the version range must also exclude that version when identified as pre-release (e.g. 2.0.0-x).
All together we had a complete design and I was able to implement the changes to the Version and VersionRange classes and write compliance tests. We even implemented it in Equinox. So from a runtime point of view, things looked OK.

But the big concern come around interactions with existing tooling, management and provisioning systems. These systems would not understand a bundle having a pre-release version string. They would require a lot of changes to properly handle support the pre-release version syntax.

Furthermore, we also become concerned about the mental complexity of pre-release versions. In numerous discussions within CPEG and with peers, people would get confused over the ordering of versions and whether some version was included in some range. If we, the "experts", couldn't keep it straight in our minds, we might expect others to also have a hard time.

So in the end, given the mental complexity and the downstream impact to tools, repositories and management systems, CPEG decided that the benefit of the changes was not sufficient to justify the cost of the change. So we agreed, after some lengthy discussions to discard the pre-release version proposal.

BJ Hargrave

1 comment:

  1. Can believe that the most more important and expected change to me won't take off....

    Have to deal with p2 repositories growing because the absence of such snapshot are becoming hard !!

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