Misc #21769: Use "vX.Y.Z" instead of "vX_Y_Z" as tag names on ruby.git

• Status: Closed
• Assignee: k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)

[k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)]

Proposal

• Use vX.Y.Z (e.g. v4.0.0) instead of vX_Y_Z (e.g. v4_0_0) as git tag names from Ruby 4.0.0
  • Also use - for preview/rc releases, e.g. v4.0.0-rc1 instead of v4_0_0_rc1

Motivation

• Inconsistent version formats and the need of conversion make the release workflow implementation a little complicated and hard to read.
• As a stable branch maintainer, I don't want to spend time figuring out which version format is right for each CLI.

Background

• Release tarball URLs already follow the proposed format (without v), e.g. ruby-4.0.0-preview2.tar.gz.
• Historically, we used vX_Y_Z because CVS didn't allow the use of . in tag names. We no longer need the workaround for Git.

  • https://www.gnu.org/software/trans-coord/manual/cvs/html_node/Tags.html
    Tag names must start with an uppercase or lowercase letter and can contain uppercase and lowercase letters, digits, ‘-’, and ‘_’.

[k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)]

• Description updated (diff)

[jeremyevans0 (Jeremy Evans)]

Is there a reason to prefer vX.Y.Z over X.Y.Z? The v tag prefix does seem more popular, though both are widely used. The historical reason for using _ in tags also applies to the reason the v prefix is used. If we are switching from _ to ., it seems reasonable to drop the unnecessary v prefix at the same time.

According to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2006265/is-there-a-standard-naming-convention-for-git-tags, vX.Y.Z was recommended in Version 1.0.0 of Semantic Versioning, but it is no longer recommended. The page has a good discussion of the pros and cons of the two approaches.

That being said, I'm in favor of the change from _ to ., either vX.Y.Z or X.Y.Z.

[k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)]

I'm fine whether it's vX.Y.Z or X.Y.Z too. I'm personally used to vX.Y.Z used by rake release (ref), so I just didn't have a problem with the v prefix.

[k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)]

• Status changed from Open to Assigned
• Assignee set to k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)

From the (draft) meeting notes:

Conclusion:

• matz: v4.0.0 accepted.
• hsbt: previous v4_0_0_preview2 should be renamed to: v4.0.0-preview2.

I'll modify ruby-master/tool/merger.rb tag to use the v4.0.0 format for Ruby 4.0+. I'll also file another ticket to announce the v4.0.0-preview2 tag rename.

To close the loop on the vX.Y.Z vs X.Y.Z discussion, @mame (Yusuke Endoh) didn't like X.Y.Z and we agreed on vX.Y.Z because all future X.Y.Z tags would show up after vX_Y_Z tags under GitHub's "Switch branches/tags" UI.

[k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)]

• Related to Misc #21774: [ANN] Rename the `v4_0_0_preview2` git tag to `v4.0.0-preview2` added

[k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)]

• Status changed from Assigned to Closed

Updated tool/merge.rb tag and tool/format-release to support the new git tag format at https://github.com/ruby/ruby/pull/15508.

[k0kubun (Takashi Kokubun)]

Here's the list of all changes I made for this ticket:

• tool/merger.rb tag
  • https://github.com/ruby/ruby/commit/0564214a00450371527c7bd69fc13618e5f25f30
• tool/merger.rb remove_tag
  • https://github.com/ruby/ruby/commit/aff0c6dad2486e939e7f6678c519314925dad866
• tool/format-release
  • https://github.com/ruby/ruby/commit/a973526c050fec044ffd7ceeba0ac8e8a1fed299
• tool/releng/update-www-meta.rb
  • https://github.com/ruby/ruby/commit/12bf3a99d72f5f6f0a7633863e285029aa407c57
• tool/make-snapshot
  • https://github.com/ruby/ruby/commit/1f0ca55750413603057fabef39550feb9e7fc3c8
• .github/workflows/draft-release.yml
  • https://github.com/ruby/actions/commit/b5d6f8d5d31d3550ed223305a64dd4b8bfb9e95b
• .github/workflows/release.yml
  • https://github.com/ruby/ruby/commit/be43ad37b7fe7dbeaec653c4ec3dfcf5999e2824