Re: [RFC] Introduce semantic versioning 2.0.0 to FreeBSD releases

On 2026-02-25 14:17:28 (+0800), Minsoo Choo wrote:
> Currently FreeBSD uses a variant of semantic versioning for releases 
> (e.g. 15.0-RELEASE-p1) where backward compatibility can be broken 
> (e.g. deprecation of a utility)in a new major version, new features 
> are added in minor versions, and security fixes are introduced in a 
> new patch version.
>
> FreeBSD's git repository reserves semantic versioning style patch 
> version (aka third version) in git tags but it has been unused for a 
> long time (e.g. 15.0.0-p1). This results in having two patch version 
> placeholders where one is unused and might​​ cause confusions for 
> some newcomers. The last git tag that contains patch version in 
> semantic versioning format is 5.2.1. After that, tags for both patch 
> version placeholders are missing until 13.4.0-p2 and 14.1.0-p6 (re@, 
> why are we missing these tags? Can we recover them?), and we cannot 
> track what happened in the past.

We only started adding the -pX tags in Git after 13.4-RELEASE-p2.  I 
never went back in time to create the tags before that.  It wouldn't be 
too difficult to do -- merely tedious.

See also: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=279416

Note that 13.4.1 would be "13.4.1-RELEASE".  We have not done a release 
like that for a very long time.

The -pX refer to patches released by the security team.  These are not 
releases.  The last time we had to re-do a release was (apparently) 
5.2.1-RELEASE.  I thought there was a more recent one but my memory is 
fuzzy.

> Thus, I propose using semantic versioning 2.0.0 [1] starting from 
> FreeBSD 16. Major and minor versions will have the same roles as 
> before. For patch versions, I propose including bug fixes as well as 
> security patches. For bugs, I mean existing things that do not produce 
> expected behaviour that has "Fixes: " metadata in git commit message.
>
> Many teams need to be involved in discussions and decisions for this 
> change. For now, I can name re@, clusteradm@, secteam@, and probably 
> core@. Once we reach community consensus, I will bring this topic to 
> those teams.
>
> [1] https://semver.org

I have no objection as long as we commit to one system and stick to it. 
:)

I suspect we can't start doing this until freebsd-update is dead and 
burried.

Philip