curl / Mailing Lists / curl-library / Single Mail
Buy commercial curl support from WolfSSL. We help you work out your issues, debug your libcurl applications, use the API, port to new platforms, add new features and more. With a team lead by the curl founder himself.

Re: Considering a version 8 at some point...

From: Andreas Falkenhahn via curl-library <curl-library_at_cool.haxx.se>
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2020 14:35:49 +0200

I wouldn't mind sticking to version 7 for as long as there are no dramatic new features or API changes that'd justify a version bump.

I don't like the current trend of bumping version numbers almost every year. For example, it took about 10 years to go from gcc 4.0 to gcc 5.0. Roughly 2005 to 2015 I guess. Now it's 2020 and we're at gcc 10.0. Chrome is now at version 83.0. I think this is a bit silly. IMHO versions should only be bumped in case of dramatic changes or improvements over the previous release.

$0.02

On 30.06.2020 at 13:48 Daniel Stenberg via curl-library wrote:

> Hi friends,

> I've mentioned before that I'd like to see us move on to version 8 before the
> minor number reaches 100 to avoid confusions. I think we're at too large
> numbers now - they get hard to remember and are easily mixed up.

> curl version 7.1 was released on August 7 2000 and we've stuck to version 7
> ever since. I wanted to stick to version 7 for as long as we remained API
> compatable - even if we ignored a few chances to bump the number when we
> bumped the SONAME a few times in the early 2000s.

> In October 2006 we shipped curl 7.16.0 and we haven't bumped the major SONAME
> number since. My strong hope is that we never will again.

> So, I think we need to consider doing a version 8 release without an SONAME
> bump. I think we should just do it at some point, without putting many
> requirements of any new bells or whistles. Similar to how the Linux kernel
> does it, if you will.

> My current thinking, as I mentioned in some release video recently, is that we
> make our 200th release version 8.0. Not because it actually means anything,
> but because it gives us something to aim at. And its a fine, even and aligned
> number.

> The release coming tomorrow is going to become version 7.71.1 and is our 193rd
> release since the beginning. If we go to version 8.0 on release 200, it means
> only 6 more release in the version 7 series and if we manage to do full
> release cycles (which is probably a bit optimistic) we could perhaps be at
> version 8.0 in a little less than a year from now. With a few short release
> cycles added to the mix, maybe already in the early 2021.

> What do you think?

-- 
Best regards,
 Andreas Falkenhahn                            mailto:andreas_at_falkenhahn.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe: https://cool.haxx.se/list/listinfo/curl-library
Etiquette:   https://curl.haxx.se/mail/etiquette.html
Received on 2020-06-30