[erlang-questions] Version numbering scheme change and the implication / Re: [ANN] Erlang/OTP 17.0-rc1 has been released.

[Ignas Vyšniauskas]

First of all, excited to hear about the RC!

Anyway, I agree with everyone that the version numbering change is a bit
fishy.

As already mentioned, this is a major backwards incompatible change for
everything that tries to parse the release version.
Secondly, as Anthony pointed out, it is indeed not Semantic Versioning
at all if it's anything like "17.0-rc1".

Perhaps a middle ground solution would be to e.g. stick with something like.

    R<MAJOR>[A|B]<MINOR>-<PATCH>-<OTHER>

with, say the <PATCH> and <OTHER> parts being optional.

In that way you can increment the versions using semantic versioning,
but still stay as backwards compatible as possible (e.g. simple parsers
that parse based on lexicographic order or only look at the major
version will stay happy).

--
Ignas