Template versioning

[Gervase Markham]

Christian Robottom Reis wrote:
> Really? I would think all changes in the stable branch would be
> backwards-compatible, to ensure that customized templates would work
> over the whole branch's lifetime. Doesn't our 2.16 experience confirm
> this?

Indeed. Being able to keep the same templates over an entire stable 
branch's lifetime should be a hard goal.

>>"If the major part changes, that means the interface to this template is
>>incompatible with the interface to previous templates. Bugzilla will note
>>this incompatibility and tell you about it.
>>
>>If the minor part changes, the interface is backwardly-compatible, but
>>there are some changes you should investigate and consider also making in
>>your custom templates."

In one sense, yes, what we are suggesting is a slight modification to 
the original scheme. But I think we've conclusively proved that getting 
people to update template versions at the time they patch is not workable.

But then, if each stable release is going to have a new template 
version, where's the benefit of versioning in this way at all? The 
template version is tied to the Bugzilla version.

OK, we can get some benefit by flagging which templates have changed on 
the stable branch - if we write code that actually does this - but we 
could just as easily do that in the release notes.

Gerv