Mesa Release Shake-Up: Mesa 8.1 Is Now Mesa 9.0

[timothyja]

If you look at the kernel versions with each release, 6.0 was Vista, and 6.1 was seven... so wonder what Window Eight has coming, 6.2 or 7.0?
So where the hell did Windows Seven and Eight come from? It's all just silly marketing anyway.

Windows 7 only has the version number 6.1 because driver makers are lazy and bumping the major version number up was what caused most drivers to fail on windows vista, not that they didnt work but just that the drivers checked for the xp version number and if they didnt find it they failed. To avoid this issue happening again in windows 7 they just bumped up the minor version number instead.

[Plombo]

I think the geometry shader thing is just because it's the major component for 3.2 (3.3 is pretty much done except for 3.2 stuff), so they're still just bumping major versions with each opengl version bump. No version inflation going on, just using the same scheme they always have, but the time between 2.1 and 3 was a lot longer.

Yeah, geometry shaders were mentioned because they are the big thing for GL 3.2. Although GLSL 1.50 will also be a non-trivial undertaking.

Speaking of geometry shaders, since most of you haven't gotten a progress update on that in the last couple of weeks, here's an update. I had a frustrating week or so but progress is back on track as of yesterday. There's still some more stuff to do in the code, but the biggest remaining things before it's ready for sending to the Mesa mailing list are writing Piglit tests for geometry shaders, squashing any Piglit regressions in existing tests, and creating an actual, logically ordered patchset from the changes.

[Delgarde]

Version number bumping has become very popular lately.
Firefox used to stand for years on 1.x/2.x versions, lately they've been running a major version what seems like every month.
Linux kernel took the major jump from 2.x to 3.x after sitting on 2.6.x for something like 8 years.
MS used to slowly increment their 3.x wondoze, then their 4.x, now suddenly they're going from 5 to 6 (visturd), 7, 8 in a matter of no time.

So, for Firefox, they basically decided that the minor numbers weren't meaningful, so they'd just have a single number they'd increment each release - this being a lot more sensible than the previous run of 3.0, 3.1, 3.5, 3.6, based on trying to assess how big a change a release would be.

For the kernel, it's kind of similar - it'd been stuck on 2.6.x for so long, that Linus figured the first two digits had become meaningless and the third was getting too big, and so he might as well change the scheme and release 3.0.

Can't speak for Windows, but I think it's tied to significant architectural changes - a major marketing release might have a new version, or it might just be a minor bump if the behind-the-scenes changes aren't too big.

[marek]

I joined Mesa during the 7.x era and bumping the version twice in a row doesn't feel right.

For the kernel, it's kind of similar - it'd been stuck on 2.6.x for so long, that Linus figured the first two digits had become meaningless and the third was getting too big, and so he might as well change the scheme and release 3.0.

From what I know, 3.0 starts the third decade in the life of the Linux kernel. There are approx. 4 releases per year. that's 40 releases per decade. The second decade consisted of versions 2.6.0 up to 2.6.39. The third decade should consist of versions 3.0 up to 3.39 unless Linus changes his mind.

Like somebody said, Windows Seven/8 is a marketing name. Windows 8 will probably be Windows NT 6.2 internally.