Thread:Extension talk:TemplateData/MediaWiki 1.22 or higher?/reply (6)

Ok. I must admit that I am surprised no, stunned that version numbers are used and then expected to mean nothing. It would be far better not to use them at all than to use them and have them mean nothing. Version numbers are used throughout the technology sector to track changes to almost everything. They exist and developed due to a need to be able to track changes with a single, easily understood, indicator; so that people did not need to be intimately involved to determine if two things were identical. Version numbers are a normal, and expected part of almost everything technological, particularly software. So much so that even a layman knows that version 3.1.5 is earlier than, and different from, version 3.1.8. Even a layman expects that if he has version 3.1.5 and another person has version 3.1.5 then they have exactly the same thing. By using version numbers and then having them mean nothing you are setting up your users to have false expectations.

I know that the software is in a Git repository; that the developers can trivially see when files have been committed and are different. Your "customers" should not be expected to go to have to go to that level to tell that 0.1.0 is not identical to version 0.1.0. They certainly do not come to the project expecting to need to do so.

Seriously, is there any valid reason that such version numbers are not kept valid (i.e. changed when changes in the code are made after a release). It is trivial to change the version number from "0.1.0" to "0.1.1" upon making changes to the source code. Is there somewhere that explains why this is not done? Or explains at all that it is something not to be expected here?

I am not trying to pick on this particular extension, you, or anyone specifically, it is just that an attitude of "version numbers mean nothing" – which I am assuming is a general case, not specific to you or this extension – is just so fundamentally contrary to my expectations, and I believe the expectations of the vast majority of people not steeped in the development here, that I am having a hard time seeing how or why it would come to be the case.