LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] Minor versions

- Slackware (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/)

- - Minor versions (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/minor-versions-4175456830/)

Quote:

Originally Posted by onebuck (Post 4926311)

I provided link to historic Slackware versions for members who may wish to know where to get earlier versions.

For the records, the mirror that I am aware which keeps the oldest is http://ftp.slackware.no/slackware/, thanks to the folks at the University of Oslo and especially to Lars Strand.

Oh, and I keep a local mirror of slackware-1.1.2 and slackware-3.0, just in case ;)

I have that older version 1.1.2 here: http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/slackware/

Eric

Hi,

Thanks guys for the updated links. I updated the links in Slackware®-Links. Eric, the 'washer' link was broken. Completely forgot about you 'taper' upgrade.

masayk,

These numbers: 12.0, ..., 12.2, 13.0, ..., 13.37, 14.0, and perhaps 14.2 mean that the next release is better than the previous one. To be precise all those releases are very stable but the newer ones include the newer versions of almost all programs and are compatible with the newer hardware so I called them better than the previous ones.

By the way: most of the guys above joked a bit because the numerology causes that some people start to joke by default (and me too from time to time). So do not try to figure out what these guys tried to tell you because they did not talk to you at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by volkerdi (Post 4925253)

So... if one single shared library bumps to a new .soname, then we could no longer use the same major version number for Slackware, according to the rules of semantic versioning.

Some operating systems try to keep minor revisions binary compatible, while major revisions don't have such a requirement. In my own distribution I would tie that to libc upgrades or other important stuff. For example Slackware 11.0 is compatible with Sun StarOffice 5.2 while Slackware 12.0 (and later) isn't due to the NTPL/linuxthreads issue.

Quote:

While it may seem that there's no rhyme or reason to Slackware's version numbers, there is to some extent. In the case of Slackware 14.0, the kernel finally moving to 3.x was probably enough to justify it, but other events like including the clang compiler for the first time also factored in.

I think, the kernel version doesn't matter much in semantic versioning, because viewed from the userland the kernel ABI is very stable across versions. Even the jump to Linux 3.0 didn't change much in that respect. (Inside the kernel there is no stable API even from the source perspective, so that doesn't matter.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ttk (Post 4924982)

That having been said, I'd be thrilled to pieces if Slackware switched to semantic versioning.

I always preferred libtool's ideas on the matter. YMMV.

Even so, there's no real way to implement the libtool concept in an OS unless every upstream component did the same thing.