Other Versioning Systems

[PNDTG]

Hi everyone.
I watched this video on epoch versioning, and generally how semantic versioning is not that great.

And it's obvious that since semantic versioning was truly great when it was introduced a lot of places adopted it and use it to this day as their main way of tracking versions.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that we should add epoch versioning as a superior model, but maybe we could discuss this and see if there is a better way.

I'm thinking of either adding epoch versioning as an optional feature of sorts.

To read more on epoch versioning visit here.

P.S. I don't know why there is no discussion about this already, I did do a quick search with "versioning" and "epoch" but there is nothing.

[Turbo87]

nothing is stopping you from using epoch versioning for your crates. it is essentially compatible with semantic versioning, so there is no conflict there. I don't think we'll use it as a first-class feature though, unless the majority of crates switch to it.

[PNDTG]

Oh... Does this mean that I can put 4 numbers instead of 3? For example 3.1.0.4?
Because there was a suggestion at the end of that blog saying how we can use somehing like 301.0.4 as a way to represent epoch format while still adhering to the semver format.

I would rather not do the latter workaround.

[Turbo87]

yeah, the latter is what I meant. the former would break all existing versions of cargo, so that would be a big ask.

[PNDTG]

Ah.. that makes sense, unless a lot of people adopt it's really not worth making such a big change.