netdev - Re: [PATCH 1/5] batman-adv: Start new development cycle

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Date:   Fri, 3 Feb 2023 09:29:50 +0100
From:   Jiri Pirko <jiri@...nulli.us>
To:     Linus Lüssing <linus.luessing@...3.blue>
Cc:     Simon Wunderlich <sw@...onwunderlich.de>, kuba@...nel.org,
        davem@...emloft.net, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
        b.a.t.m.a.n@...ts.open-mesh.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/5] batman-adv: Start new development cycle

Thu, Feb 02, 2023 at 07:44:06PM CET, linus.luessing@...3.blue wrote:
>On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 03:55:08PM +0100, Jiri Pirko wrote:
>> Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 11:21:29AM CET, sw@...onwunderlich.de wrote:
>> >This version will contain all the (major or even only minor) changes for
>> >Linux 6.3.
>> >
>> >The version number isn't a semantic version number with major and minor
>> >information. It is just encoding the year of the expected publishing as
>> >Linux -rc1 and the number of published versions this year (starting at 0).
>> 
>> I wonder, what is this versioning good for?
>
>The best reason in my opinion is that it's useful to convince
>ordinary people that they should update :-).
>
>Usually when debugging reported issues one of the first things we ask
>users is to provide the output of "batctl -v":
>
>```
>$ batctl -v
>batctl debian-2023.0-1 [batman-adv: 2022.3]

Why kernel version is not enough for you? My point is, why to maintain
internal driver version alongside with the kernel version?

I just don't see any point of having these parallel driver versions.
Looks like a historical relict. IDK.

I'w just wondering, that's all.


>```
>
>If there is a very old year in there I think it's easier to tell
>and convince people to try again with newer versions and to
>update.
>
>And also as a developer I find it easier to (roughly) memorize
>when a feature was added by year than by kernel version number.
>So I know by heart that TVLVs were added in 2014 and multicast
>snooping patches and new multicast handling was added around 2019
>for instance. But don't ask me which kernel version that was :D.
>I'd have to look that up. So if "batctl -v" displayed a kernel
>version number that would be less helpful for me.
>
>Also makes it easier for ordinary users to look up and
>compare their version with our news archive:
>https://www.open-mesh.org/projects/open-mesh/wiki/News-archive
>
>Also note that we can't do a simple kernel version to year
>notation mapping in userspace in batctl. OpenWrt uses the most
>recent Linux LTS release. But might feature a backport of a more
>recent batman-adv which is newer than the one this stable kernel
>would provide. Or people also often use Debian stable but compile
>and use the latest batman-adv version with it.

Yeah, for out of tree driver, have whatever.

>
>Does that make sense?