Re: [eclipse.org-architecture-council] The Art of Project Release Naming

[John Arthorne <John_Arthorne@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I can across an anecdote recently that
illustrated the value of release version numbers. I was shopping for a
cordless phone to replace my old 5.8 Ghz phone.  When I last bought
a phone, the choice was between DECT 2.4 GHz and DECT 5.8 GHz, with the
larger number generally being a better technology. This time around, there
was a new option: DECT 6.0. After doing some research, I discovered that
this new phone should actually be DECT 1.9 GHz, since that is the spectrum
it operates on. However, the marketing guys thought that a smaller number
would indicate an inferior product to customers, so they pulled the "6.0"
number out of thin air. As a customer I confess I did immediately assume
the higher number was the better technology. Although the conventions are
slightly different, I think this is a perfect example of why a release
"marketing number" can and sometimes should differ from an "engineering
number". It also illustrates the value of a number over simple names
(if they were DECT "zebra" and DECT "camel", a customer
standing in the store wouldn't know which one to pick). All this to say
that I think it would be valuable for us to describe some recommendations
on release naming for projects. Some consistency across projects would
be great.

John

Chris Aniszczyk <zx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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06/30/2009 06:47 PM

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Subject	[eclipse.org-architecture-council] The Art of Project Release Naming

Esteemed members of the Eclipse AC,

How do you handle naming within your projects? There was
some discussion that sparked my interested on the ECF mailing list recently...
     http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/ecf-dev/msg02655.html

In essence, it boiled around versioning things properly
and from that... what to call your project when referring to a release.

I have noticed in Galileo, projects like CDT seems to
just increment a version each release. I don't know if the CDT team is
doing this as a marketing thing only or actually revving bundle versions
when they shouldn't be. I find it software engineering has unfortunately
taught us to treat versions as a marketing number :(

In the end, the issue I want to bring up is if the AC
thinks recommending a project release naming scheme is important?

Should we be consistent across projects and maybe recommend
that projects name things to align with the train?
     CDT Galileo vs. CDT 6.0?
     ECF Helios vs. ECF 4.0?

Thoughts?

Cheers,

-- 
Chris Aniszczyk | EclipseSource Austin | +1 860 839 2465
http://twitter.com/eclipsesource
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