> That is exactly why I used GitHub URLs containing the release tag in
> them ;-)

That is not a "release". That is a the ever changing code base.

Consider ISC BIND :
https://lists.isc.org/pipermail/bind-announce/2016-July/000998.html

Consider Libidn :
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-libidn/2016-07/msg00009.html

That is a well understood formal release of a version.

So is this for Curl and libCurl :

     https://curl.haxx.se/mail/archive-2016-07/0040.html

Therefore the version must match 7.50.0 otherwise it is not to be
considered a formal "release" along with an announcement on the project
web site and the usual mail lists. One may say the same for the a whole
pile of other projects such as GCC, Apache, etc etc.

The released software must be available in some sort of a trivial
archive format and usually a GPG signature or at least a SHA256 hash
provided. Thus :

     https://curl.haxx.se/download.html

Anything else is not a release of anything. It is a prototype
or a code change or a patch or a even whimsy thought. However I will
admit that there are odd balls outthere such as the bash shell. However
the bash people release actual patch files :

     ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bash/bash-4.3-patches/bash43-046

Thus it is possible to have a built and tested "release" of the bash
shell which will have a formal patch rev tag built into it :

dev_$ /usr/local/bin/bash --version
GNU bash, version 4.3.42(1)-release (sparc-sun-solaris2.10)
Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
<http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>

This is free software; you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Here it is possible to refer to a release version 4.3.42 or perhaps a
version 4.3.46 regardless of the fact that the last "release" from the
bash people was 4.3.30 :

     http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bash/

People can argue this all day but the upshot of release versions is that
we do actually have a Linux 4.7 kernel released and we have a formal
and well documented version for curl and libcurl released as well as a
thousand other software packages. Anything not released is "beta" or
just a code change unless there is a formal patch release. None of which
can be released into a testing stack inside a corporation or to some
server stack which is under close guard and scrutiny to a whole slew of
auditors and testing departments etc etc.

Dennis

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Received on 2016-07-29