[Bf-committers] version naming

[Benjamin Tolputt]

I was going to stay out of this, it being a non-technical "impression"
thing; but I've been talking about impressions elsewhere and they are
important (very important) to those not directly hacking at the code. So
here goes.

Firstly, the MAJOR + "." + MINOR + "." + "BUILD/BUGFIX" method of naming
versions gets a big thumbs up from me. I know it is not how Blender has
done it before but it is the way every other application I've ever
worked on or bothered checking the version of works. This is how people
who bother knowing the versions of their software are used to thinking
about it.

That said, I am against a major version bump *every* time we go through
an Open Movie project or similar. Whilst there are some major (and
desirable) improvements, the current definition of a "new version of
Blender" does not always result in what I would think as a "new major
version" (as a software developer at least). A minor version bump for
sure, there are new features worthy of investigating & basing an upgrade
decision on, but a major version for me involves major changes to how I
use the program, not just additions to what I can do.

Based on that reasoning - I think the new version coming up *should* be
3.0 (i.e. a major version bump). Unlike changes between 2.47-to-2.48 &
2.48-to-2.49; there is so much non-incremental change that a user cannot
just smoothly move from one to the other. The user interface has
completely changed in concept and layout. The scripting interface is so
different that every script is going to need rewriting. And so on. It is
not a matter of just playing with the new cloth system or getting the
hang of new animation features - tutorials and education material needs
to be rewritten from the ground up.

I am not saying this is a Bad Thing(tm); in fact I highly support the
changes that have been made. I simply state, for the record, that these
changes are large enough that any other application I can think of would
bump their major version number having made a similar level of change
from their previous release. I know the major change that 2.50 means
over 2.49 because I follow Blender's development. Anyone looking for
educational material online though (i.e. relatively new to Blender) is
not going to know that the change between 2.48-to-2.49 is minor compared
to the leap to 2.50. As such, the likelihood of someone getting a 2.48
or 2.49 tutorial, trying to apply it to the 2.50 branch, resulting in
immense confusion is high.

-- 
Regards,

Benjamin Tolputt
Analyst Programmer