dev@grizzly.java.net

A Proposal for Release Numbering Conventions for Grizzly

From: Ken Cavanaugh <Ken.Cavanaugh_at_Sun.COM>
Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 12:52:31 -0700
One of the things we discussed at today's grizzly meeting was release numbering.
The current Grizzly release is 1.5.0.  We propose following a fairly conventional
major.minor.patch release number scheme:
It is not necessary to create a new release for each update to the subversion repository, though a
single update may certainly result in a new release.  Every release
should be announced to the Grizzly dev alias.  This should also tie into the Wiki that Jean-Francois is
exploring for tracking Grizzly development.

This proposal is related to Jean-Francois' proposal for sending notifications to the dev alias about
upcoming changes.  Such notifications should indicate which level of release they require
(major/minor/patch), and may propose an appropriate release number when possible.

Eventually Grizzly may need to consider how to handle incompatible changes.  The JDK has
always maintained a strict backward compatibility requirement, which means that deprecated
methods have (so far) never been removed.  This complicates the API and has its own drawbacks,
while giving customers a very important feature: strict binary compatibility from release to release.

This model is not appropriate for Grizzly, because grizzly is still evolving rapidly.  However,
Grizzly has also gather a significant developer base which we must support.  Therefore,
Grizzly should probably adopt the following policies for compatibility:
Please send comments, questions, and concerns about this proposal to the Grizzly dev alias.

Thanks,

Ken.