Re: [PATCH] add patchlevel to --version output

[Wesley Schwengle <wesleys@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 6/1/26 18:32, dana wrote:
> On Mon 1 Jun 2026, at 16:46, Wesley Schwengle wrote:
> > Sorry, I wasn't really active on the maillinglist in the past few 
> > months (or in the past year if honest).
>
> np i was being facetious

I know, but still :)

> > I think during our irc-discussion on the topic the preference for 
> > odd/even for releases vs development became a strong preference. 
> > At least for me it did.
>
> i wasn't advocating for that, just mentioning that we did it that 
> way in another project i was involved with. i wouldn't mind it 
> either, but it would be a big change that would affect more than 
> just test releases. also i think it's considered kind of old- 
> fashioned now?

No, I don't think so. But what would probably help is to set a release
cadence, stick to once a year for stable releases, 5.9, 5.10, etc etc
and perhaps do some point releases every so many months to fix CVE's. Or
just CVE's.

Let upstream deal with cherry-picking, Debian does this, I saw Fedora
does too. So no need to worry about that IMO.

Which brings me to...

> > But even in those cases, a tagged pre-release is.. I'm not sure. 
> > tag vs release might be automated? ./zsh-release --version 5.9.2
> > -- rc 2 becomes 5.9.2~2 and tags it at 5.9.2-rc2?
>
> the release process certainly should be automated, it's crazy that 
> it's not tbh. getting rid of the ChangeLog would help with that, we 
> wouldn't have to add a script to handle updating it

If you automate it, you can deal with bugfixes to a maint-branch, merge
maint into master. And I saw some mentions about ./changelog/[worker-
id].txt That should help a-lot. Automation probably helps making 
releasing easier, and hopefully more frequent.

> as far as the tag vs version number, idk

It has my preference. You have the best of both worlds. Right now there 
is no real standard. And because releases are spread out over years 
there isn't really a standard to refer to.

> there are lots of options, i just worry about annoying people

I don't ;) I think if you automate the release process the releases can
be done quicker and you annoy less people, both contributors and users.


Cheers,
Wesley

--
Wesley Schwengle