Amen, and AMEN!

Gary Dietz
Whitman College
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>>> Stan Sieler <[log in to unmask]> 07/02/97 10:41am >>>
Hi all,

Well, it's time for my annual grousing about the @#$%^& version numbering
of MPE.  I just spent some confused time wondering about:

   RELEASE: C.55.01   MPE/iX HP31900 C.05.08   USER VERSION: C.55.01

Does that mean I'm on 5.5 Power Patch 1, or 5.0 (possibly patch 8?), or
5.8, or ?

The killer this time is the "C.05.08", which (AFAIK) has nothing
whatsoever to do with either "5" in the phrase "5.5".  On 5.0,
that field was "B.79.06" ... or, put differently, a value sufficiently
different from "5.0" that there was far less confusion.
(BTW, I belatedly remembered that this is the "OS Build ID")

Hey, HP ... *WHEN* will we have human-readable version information that
is:

   1) understandable

   2) coherent

   3) meaningful

Proposal:

   When working on the kernel for release X.Y, the "OS Build ID"
   (the middle field of the SHOWME output) must be
   something like "X.0Y.nn"  ... that gives you 100 builds (the "nn")
   before you run into trouble internally).

   Thus, I firmly expect the release version of, say, 6.0 to have
   an OS build ID of something like:  6.00.nn

Is the letter ("B" or "C") important?  Apparently not ... it's used
in the middle of the group name in TELESUP (e.g.: SYMOS.OSB79.TELESUP),
and as such is easily replaced by the major digit of the release
(e.g., SYMOS.OS600nn.TELESUP).

How about it ... an announcement at HP WORLD '97 would be quite
welcome?!