Comment by nubela

11 years ago

How does a 1.0.0 translate to beta-stability build?

As I understand it, the io.js devs think Node.js should have switched to 1.x ("stable") a long time ago. But from their perspective, this is io.js's first release with their own build infrastructure and they made a lot of aggressive changes (updated V8 dependency, etc.), so they're calling their own release beta-quality. Makes sense?

  • It doesn't make sense to release beta quality software as "v1.0.0" without any reference to being a beta in the version itself. Either use a 0.x version or use a -beta -identifier if the api is fixed but stability is not guaranteed

Node is moving to semantic versioning: http://semver.org/

In this scheme, version number is not an indicator of stability.

  • Semver specifically stipulates that pre-1.0.0 is for unstable work.

    > Major version zero (0.y.z) is for initial development. Anything may change at any time. The public API should not be considered stable.

    It also allows for identifiers/metadata after the version eg 1.0.0-alpha or similar.

    It also specifically says:

    > Version 1.0.0 defines the public API.