[Lazarus] Lazarus trunk version number

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Sat, 1 Jul 2023, Sven Barth via lazarus wrote:

> Maxim Ganetsky via lazarus <lazarus at lists.lazarus-ide.org> schrieb am Fr.,
> 30. Juni 2023, 15:48:
>
>> 30.06.2023 16:44, Maxim Ganetsky via lazarus пишет:
>>> 30.06.2023 14:27, Martin Frb via lazarus пишет:
>>>> On 30/06/2023 12:51, Michael Van Canneyt via lazarus wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, 30 Jun 2023, Juha Manninen via lazarus wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Friday, June 30, 2023, John Landmesser via lazarus <
>>>>>> lazarus at lists.lazarus-ide.org> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> perhaps that should have become 3.00 ?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Lazarus *3.99* (rev main_3_99-41-g3d8dd85474) FPC 3.2.2
>>>>>>> x86_64-linux-gtk2
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> You are looking at trunk, the development version. See :
>>>>>> https://wiki.freepascal.org/Version_Numbering#Lazarus_3.0_and_newer
>>>>>
>>>>> You might want to add some explanation for this new versioning
>>>>> scheme to that page.
>>>>
>>>> Added.
>>>
>>> I made some improvements, hope it is even more clear now.
>>>
>>>>> The graph does not help.
>>>>>
>>>>> From what is currently there, I don't understand neither the logic
>>>>> nor the need of this change.
>>>> "Need"... Well, in terms of "because it solved the issue xyz" => then
>>>> there is no need.
>>>
>>> Basically, version numbering is all about "marketing". By always
>>> increasing major version we tell to the general audience that major
>>> release indeed contains major changes (which is always the case).
>>>
>>> So we solve/improve "marketing" issues.
>>>
>> BTW, in my opinion FPC has similar issues and will benefit from such
>> approach to versioning too.
>>
>
> In FPC the major number *has* a meaning, namely that there have been
> significant changes in the code generator. Towards the 2.x series it was
> the rewrite of the different backends and for the 3.x series it was the
> introduction of the high level code generator.
> The minor number is then to signify a new release with many new features on
> top of the same base architecture and the release number is then to
> differentiate between development and stable.
>
> We don't follow "marketing".

It might be wise to communicate or document this somewhere: either on wiki or website.

I work almost 30 years on FPC, and even I didn't know this.

Michael.