Thursday, August 30, 2007

Version numbers

This always amuses me. As if the kernel version of 2.6.20.16.28.1 was too short, here are a couple more to marvel at:

Opensource version numbers from the Ubuntu repository:
  • The commented version number

    libqt3-mt - 3:3.3.8really3.3.7-0ubuntu5.1

  • The dfsg version number

    libmagick9 - 7:6.2.4.5.dfsg1-0.14ubuntu0.1

  • The source package version number

    libnss3 - 2:1.firefox2.0.0.6+1-0ubuntu1

  • The kernel module version number

    nvidia-glx-legacy - 1.0.7184+2.6.20.5-16.29

  • The compulsively specific version number

    freewnn-common - 1.1.0+1.1.1-a021-1.1

  • The all-in-one cvs tag version number

    faad - 2.0.0+cvs20040908+mp4v2+bmp-0ubuntu3

  • The usual timestamp version number

    ippd - 1:3.10.20070306-0ubuntu1

  • The holy-crap-you-win version number

    comerr-dev - 2.1-1.39+1.40-WIP-2006.11.14+dfsg-2ubuntu1

Then there are Microsoft version numbers like
6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2gdr.050301-1519 (Internet Explorer 6).

In terms of actual point numbers, the linux kernel image of 2.6.20.16.28.1 pales in comparison to a Drupal based shopping cart's version number of 1.125.2.23.2.17.2.50. That's a whole eight levels of nesting!

I gave up on such schemes long time ago. Everything I code has only a serially increasing 'build number' which starts from 1 and goes up to however many times I change and re-build it ...