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Linus Torvalds Says Linux Kernel v5.0 'Should Be Meaningless' (betanews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Following the release of Linux kernel 4.16, Linus Torvalds has said that the next kernel will be version 5.0. Or maybe it won't, because version numbers are meaningless. The announcement -- of sorts -- came in Torvalds' message over the weekend about the first release candidate for version 4.17. He warns that it is not "shaping up to be a particularly big release" and questions whether it even matters what version number is slapped on the final release. He says that "v5.0 will happen some day. And it should be meaningless. You have been warned." That's not to say that Linux kernel v5.0 -- or whatever it ends up being called -- will not be significant. With the removal of old architecture and other bits of tidying up, with v4.17 RC1 there were more lines of code removed than added: something described as "probably a first. Ever. In the history of the universe. Or at least kernel releases."

5 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. It should by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    0.0.xx releases should be bugfixes. 0.xx releases should be minor feature updates. X.00 releases should be releases that break, or significantly change, the ABI, or that add major functionality.

  2. Re:What's in a number, what's in a name? by the_saint1138 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Many version numbers in software are meaningful.

    If anyone depends on your software, then using major/minor/patch version numbers to distinguish which changes are backwards incompatible, feature additions, and bug fixes is very helpful to those downstream. See https://semver.org/

  3. Re:I can haz frist post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Once Linus is no longer maintaining the kernel (or has died), you will miss him more than you miss Steve Jobs.

  4. semantic versioning by ooloorie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is how Semantic Versioning ought to work:

    Given a version number MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, increment the:

    MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes,
    MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards-compatible manner, and
    PATCH version when you make backwards-compatible bug fixes.
    Additional labels for pre-release and build metadata are available as extensions to the MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH format.

    So, while Linux kernel version numbers may be meaningless, it would perhaps be better if they were actually meaningful.

    1. Re:semantic versioning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Linux kernel historically has had no API/ABI stability at all and Linus actively opposes any such concept. For a good reason too, we wouln't want to end up like Windows with their backwards compatibility baggage. On the other hand that means it's really hard to support hardware in any other way than having it in the kernel itself - just ask nVidia how their closed driver efforts are going when a new kernel/x.org versions arrive.