Ok, but I think then I understand the problem even less
Ultimately, it doesnât really matter as per @davidâs latest comments, so just to wrap it up.
The proposed model is monthly release, plus 2 esr versions, so e.g. for 2026:
2026.1
2026.2
2026.3
âŠ
2026.8
2026.9
2026.10
âŠ
So assuming we are in October 2026 and .2 and and .8 are esr versions, that means 4 supported versions.
And my thought was. Wouldnât it be easier to basically have quarterly versions, i.e. for 2026:
2026.1
2026.2
2026.3
âŠ
And still only the current one and the previous release would be supported, so in October 2026, it would be 2.
And the whole reasoning was that maybe this would make it easier for both developers and users. But as mentioned above: @david has clarified that less frequent releases are not an option.
Understood. That is roughly how I expected it. Indeed, in this case a bit of tool support would be nice at least mid-term.
The way I conceptualise it, is: you are on a specific release channel (latest, release, esr), and usually you would relatively quickly move to the next release, so getting a message and/or notification when the new release is available and having a single command to switch to it would be neat. And for cases, in which you have delayed the adoption of a new release, it would also be nice to be reminded when the currently used release becomes obsolete/unsupported. Bonus points if the respective tool could also let you switch release channels quickly
But I understand if thatâs not the top priority right now, and you still recommend people to stay on test-passed/latest.
I see. In the context of my work, getting out a feature to customers is considered âfastâ
Also, as mentioned above, my thought was that moving to a quarterly schedule would actually make your life (and the life of plugin/theme developers) easier, because thereâs less branches under maintenance. So if thatâs not the case, then I guess that really doesnât make sense for you
SemVer zelf is niet echt ontworpen voor grote applicaties. Ik begrijp dat het veel meer gericht is op bibliotheken die door software worden gebruikt, en met name is de logica voor versienummering opgebouwd rond de API van het pakket.
We zouden SemVer echter wel op onze API('s) kunnen toepassen. Sterkere garanties rond de APIâs die Discourse blootlegt is zeker een gesprek waard, maar ik denk dat het losstaat van dit gesprek.
Nu begrijp ik dat u niet zei dat we SemVer-compatibel moeten zijn - u zei alleen dat we getallen moeten blijven gebruiken die compatibel zijn met het nummeringssysteem dat door SemVer wordt gespecificeerd.
Een normaal versienummer MOET de vorm X.Y.Z hebben, waarbij X, Y en Z niet-negatieve gehele getallen zijn en GEEN voorloopnullen mogen bevatten. X is de hoofdversie, Y is de kleine versie en Z is de patchversie. Elk element MOET numeriek toenemen. Bijvoorbeeld: 1.9.0 â 1.10.0 â 1.11.0.
Ik denk dat de suggestie over âvoorloopnullenâ het enige is dat we zouden overtreden als we die route inslaan.
Anders denk ik dat elke SemVer-bibliotheek de versienummers die we voorstellen nog steeds zou kunnen parsen en correct zou kunnen sorteren.
Dat terzijde, kunt u meer vertellen over waarom u denkt dat naleving van een SemVer-nummeringssysteem waarde heeft?
The OP says that youâre not using leading zeros, if I understand correctly.
I think also a compelling reason to use leading zeros (sorting by versions) has been proposed. Are leading zeros the current plan? (I still like month-versions rather than serial versions).
The point of SemVer is that the version number should communicate some useful information. The only information communicated by your proposed scheme is the earthâs orbit around the sun. That information is not very useful to the consumer of the software.
If for some reason I did want to know the date of the release, I would look at the release and get the full date.
Not really. The point is to communicate the nature of the release to the user.
If the release is a patch version bump, this is communicating that the changeset doesnât contain anything that is expected to affect the workflow of the users of the software.
If the release is a minor version bump, this is communicating that the changeset includes the addition of new user facing components, but nothing that will break existing workflows of the users of the software.
If the release is a major version bump, this is communicating that the changeset includes changes that may break existing workflows of the users of the software.
The determination of which of the version components should be bumped is more clear cut in a software product that has a single user interface, but the principles remain the same even for a software product like Discourse where there are a variety of levels of interfaces and types of consumers (e.g., plugin developers, API consumers, forum staff, end users).
Even if the choice of which component to bump is a bit more subjective in this software project, it still results in the version number having meaning instead of just being some arbitrary number, as is the case with your proposal.
Contrary to semver, the proposed version numbering scheme makes it immediately clear if a version is still supported (like Ubuntu). Since that depends on the earthâs orbit around the sun as well, this actually makes sense.
This is clearly targeted towards packages and libraries. Any discourse release includes changes that may break existing workflows of the users of the software. Iâve even seen security patches do that. Semver is not usable for complex applications.
Just to emphasize a point that might get lost, I think Discourse does great here. One improvement would be to at least highlight the topics youâve already written that describe changes and potential breakage within that upgrade cycle. For example, with the 3.5 release, I had to open the release notes, click through to the blog, and then happen to click on the link about bundling plugins with Discourse core in order to catch that detail that leaving those plugins within my config file could impact upgrades.
Itâd be great to pull those kinds of notes out onto a page/topic for ESR releases, even if itâs just a set of links to existing topics that should be reviewed prior to performing an ESR upgrade.
This may be beyond the scope of this thread though - my feedback on the versioning change is that I welcome it and appreciate the transparency here. I think this would be a great improvement that would simplify things while giving us more options for self-hosting.
De voorloopnullen en of er gestreefd moet worden naar synchronisatie met maanden wordt explicieter overwogen. @david zal een update delen zodra de groep die hieraan werkt tot een beslissing komt.
That is not the important information for a forum maintainer evaluating a new release.
No, really. You are missing the actual point of SemVer by refusing to understand that âAPIâ actually just means the interface. There is absolutely no reason the spirit of SemVer can not be used in versioning of any type of software.
Het maakt niet echt uit of het een bibliotheek of een grotere applicatie is. Een semantisch versiebeheerschema werkt perfect voor grote applicaties. Het kan zelfs worden gebruikt voor een verzameling applicaties die zijn gebundeld tot een platform, maar hier wordt het behoorlijk moeilijk om aan te pakken.
Dat gezegd hebbende. Ik geef veel meer de voorkeur aan die constructie omdat het duidelijker communiceert naar ontwikkelaars dat er compatibiliteitsproblemen zullen zijn. Het YYYY.N-schema zegt mij niets als ontwikkelaar, en niets als beheerder.
Dus de vraag is, wat wil je communiceren met de versie? Als je 6 feature-releases wilt doen (die wel of geen compatibiliteitsproblemen kunnen hebben), en elke 6e release langer wordt ondersteund met patches; en je wilt patch-releases niet versie-nummeren. Dan is X.Y een geschikt schema waarbij Y=0 de langer ondersteunde is. X zou gewoon een nummer zijn. Het probleem is wanneer X het jaar is, dan wordt Y snel geassocieerd met een maand. Dus nieuwere, langer ondersteunde releases worden in januari uitgebracht? Ik moet altijd opzoeken welke Ubuntu-versie een LTS is, wat me irriteert.
Dus wat als Discourse gewoon doorgaat met de huidige hoofdversie. De volgende langer ondersteunde versie heet 4.0; en dan krijgen we 4.1 tot 4.5 als feature-releases; gevolgd door 5.0 die de nieuwste langer ondersteunde is.
Dan heb je ook niet dat ongemakkelijke moment waarop een release wordt uitgesteld vanwege een groot probleem.
Je kunt optioneel een âpatchâ-nummer toevoegen als je van plan bent expliciet patches uit te brengen (in plaats van doorlopende patch-releases). âMaar dan heb je x.y.z wat semver isâ. Nou nee, het lijkt op semver, maar dat is het niet. Elke nieuwe âminorâ release kan compatibiliteitsproblemen hebben. Dus ik stel voor om gewoon vast te houden aan het X.Y-versieschema met Y=0 â LTS.
Versietaal terzijde. Ik hou van het nieuwe releaseplan.
This discussion doesnât look good. I can see a decision from the development team to embrace a new versioning system that make sense for them, and others who suddenly seem to consider that Discourse version was following semantic versioning⊠which it was not. Itâs always been a rolling release, at least since 1.0, or?
But the arguments on all sides of the debate seem flawed:
âindustry standardâ: Linux is using even majors for stable, and odd majors for developing.
âearth orbiting around the Sunâ: well, if you convert to Islam, youâll get into trouble because youâll drop versions and no, it wonât match the Sun revolution anymore, but the Moon cycles. Here, you now understand that by choosing YYYY.Y.Z versioning scheme over X.Y.Z, you enforced a dominant culture.
Minor release remains unclear: you mention âassuming a monthly cadenceâ, but it could be as well 3 weeks or 7, depending on the functionality, in which case counting Y from 0 makes sense, or are you actually aiming to release monthly, in which case counting M from 1 would make more sense?
The main change I see is that by adopting a monthly pace, the Discourse team is setting expectations and moving away from release targets, embracing regular releases instead.
LTS for 8 months does not really sound âlongâ. NodeJS is moving too fast, but they keep LTS support over 30 months and a few current versions at once, while Ubuntu keeps LTS over years. Although I understand that Discourse is neither a language nor an OS, it seems to announce that new functionality will ship at quite fast a pace, which brings another issue to mind: since new admin settings are introduced every now and then, weâll soon get into the Wordpress hell with infinite options and unfathomable complication for site administration, aka bloatware: it becomes important then to clarify how you go from existing releases with targets to regular releases, and how do you choose which targets to drop (or postpone) for a release, etc. (which may already be documented, but I missed that one.)
Would you be so kind to share your rationale between the pace of development / versioning, and what do you have in mind to avoid admins drowning under too many settings and a heightened learning curve?
Before answering your other questions, I want to first clarify that our intended release frequency isnât changing with this proposal.
For the past 3 years, weâve been making âstableâ releases approximately every 6 months, targeting these releases for the end of each January and July, with a bit of slippage here and there:
In this new proposal, we intend to keep the same cadence weâve been following, with the main changes being:
What we now call âstableâ releases, weâll be calling âextended support releasesâ
Weâve chosen that name and not long term support, because we agree that itâs extended relative to our other supported releases, but not necessarily âlong termâ. This proposal doesnât include adding a long term support release.
Currently, support for one stable release ends immediately when the next release is made. With this new proposal, support overlaps for ~2 months, so people have time to upgrade while receiving security patches
What we now call âbetaâ releases, weâll be calling âreleasesâ
We donât currently support beta releases at all beyond their release date. They are merely checkpoints along the way that come with a notification to fast forward, as they also often include security fixes
With this proposal we do intend to support releases for ~2 months, so people can decide when to upgrade, while continuing to receive security patches
With that in mind, do you feel like your other questions about too many settings are still related to this proposal? Or are they independent concerns that would be better to discuss in a separate topic?
Thank you for your thorough explanation @mcwumbly!
Indeed, this is a different concern. Customizing the admin using a plugin would be useful for making tests about what it could look like. Any ongoing work regarding such an approach?
Not specifically this, but weâve been investing quite a bit in improving the admin UI over the past year. If you want to dig into these things more, can you start a new topic and lay out some of the problems and or ideas that youâd like to discuss more?
This is a great change (I especially like overlapping ESRs)
Feedback:
I would like to see that lifecycle graph on a centralized page so I can easily check on it, ideally with a EOL table so I can easily tell what is in and out of support at any given time and plan accordingly (at least for ESRs).
Stream switching:
This would be great â but even just being able to choose which tag during setup would be huge. Or even just include the manual steps in the setup documentation. If someone wants to start on stable/ESR, itâs really not clear how to do that right now to a new administrator. (I think the answer is pass âskip-rebuild to ./launcher, then edit the version, then do rebuild for the first time, but Iâm not sure.) Since otherwise the setup just immediately launches into grabbing & running the latest version, and then going backwards is asking for trouble.
(Example of the difficulty to a new admin: Right now, the #1 search result for âinstall discourse stableâ directs to this thread, which links to another thread which explains how to upgrade to stable, but not how to install stable from scratch.)
