[perl #129917] perlpolicy does not explain what a "maintenancebranch" is before stipulating restrictions on it

On Wed Oct 19 07:52:29 2016, walde.christian@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> This is a bug report for perl from walde.christian@gmail.com,
> generated with the help of perlbug 1.39 running under perl 5.14.2.
> 
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> [Please describe your issue here]
> 
> While trying to read up something in the perlpolicy file i stumbled on
> the heading of "MAINTENANCE BRANCHES" within which the thing i was
> looking for was mentioned. However at no point before said heading,
> nor directly after it, is detailed what a maintenance branch actually
> is. It can be guessed from context, but i think explicit mention would
> be good.
> 

I figured I'd suggest some language to address this concern and next figured that it would be a good idea to discuss 'maintenance branch' in relation to releases of 'major versions' of Perl.

It turns out, however, that we use the term 'major version' in two different ways in our documentation.  (The following is not intended to be exhaustive.)

1. In 'pod/perlfaq1.pod', we have:

#####
The number after Perl (i.e. the 5 after Perl 5) is the major release of the perl interpreter as well as the version of the language. Each major version has significant differences that earlier versions cannot support.

The current major release of Perl is Perl 5, first released in 1994.
...
There are really two tracks of perl development: a maintenance version and an experimental version. The maintenance versions are stable, and have an even number as the minor release (i.e. perl5.18.x, where 18 is the minor release). The experimental versions may include features that don't make it into the stable versions, and have an odd number as the minor release (i.e. perl5.19.x, where 19 is the minor release).
...
The number after Perl (i.e. the 5 after Perl 5) is the major release of the perl interpreter as well as the version of the language.
#####

So in the above, '5' is a major version, the '24' in '5.24.x' is a minor version.  And 'maintenance version' is any integer(s) in the 'x' position above.

2. In pod/perlpolicy.pod, we have:

#####
To the best of our ability, we will provide "critical" security patches/releases for any major version of Perl whose 5.x.0 release was within the past three years.
#####

In the above, 'major version' seems to mean '5.20', '5.22', '5.24' much more than simply '5'.

I suspect that for those of us in P5P or otherwise involved in the development of Perl 5, 'Perl 5' is the language (Perl 6 is perhaps a "sister" language) and 5.24 is its current 'major version'.

Now, since 'perlfaq*' is maintained CPAN-upstream, I can live with differences between those files and pod/perl*.pod.  But I think we should be consistent in our terminology within the group of files maintained blead-upstream.

I'm too sleeply to say more at this time, so let's get come comments from others.

Thank you very much.

-- 
James E Keenan (jkeenan@cpan.org)

---
via perlbug:  queue: perl5 status: new
https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=129917

• [perl #129917] perlpolicy does not explain what a "maintenancebranch" is before stipulating restrictions on it by James E Keenan via RT
• Re: [perl #129917] perlpolicy does not explain what a "maintenancebranch" is before stipulating restrictions on it by Sawyer X
• [perl #129917] perlpolicy does not explain what a "maintenancebranch" is before stipulating restrictions on it by Christian Walde