Early releases and backwards compatibility

[Jef Driesen]

Hi,

The original plan was to introduce all backwards incompatible changes 
on the roadmap all at once, and only then make a first official release. 
However this turns out to be very impractical and slows down the 
development process. Lately I'm also receiving requests from 
distribution packagers (Debian in particular) to make some real 
releases.

Therefore, I propose the following intermediate strategy. We start 
making early releases with version numbers 0.x.y. Whenever a backwards 
incompatible change is introduced, the number x is increased. For fully 
backwards compatible changes, only the number y is increased. This would 
allow me to introduce new changes incrementally. I'm aware this won't be 
perfect for applications, but at least you can require a specific 
version, and/or support multiple versions with conditional compilation.

Once the api is declared fully stable, we move on to version 1.0.0 and 
provide full backwards compatibility from there on.

Would this be an acceptable solution for you? Feedback is always 
welcome!

Jef