[O] Org should follow SemVer conventions [Was: Automatically save the archive file after org-archive-subtree]

[Adam Porter]

Kodi Arfer <address@hidden> writes:

> As of
>
> https://code.orgmode.org/bzg/org-mode/commit/b186d1d7236c0dc397eadeb004c9a17eaffd3aab
>
> archiving a subtree no longer automatically saves the archive
> file. How can I get this behavior back?
>
> A Debian bug was also opened for this issue:
>
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=887332

According to that bug report, the behavior changed when upgrading from
9.1.2 to 9.1.5.

I think this shouldn't happen.  "Patch"-level releases (incrementing the
third number) should only contain bug fixes.  Changes which change
default behavior belong in, at minimum, "minor" releases (incrementing
the second number).

Users should be able to freely upgrade from 9.1.x to 9.1.x+1 without
having to worry about reading a changelog and adjusting their config to
avoid changes in behavior which could lead to data loss.

In my own (much smaller) projects, I follow this practice, which is
basically SemVer.  When I fix bugs, I apply the fixes to the latest
stable branch, make a new stable patch-level release, and then merge the
fixes into the master branch (in some projects, by rebasing the master
branch on top of the stable branch, and in others, by a non-fast-forward
merge of the stable branch into the master branch).  The master branch
becomes the next stable branch when its new features and other changes
have been merged for long enough and have no known bugs.

New features and refactorings are generally developed in a feature
branch and then merged into the master branch when ready, eventually
being released in the next stable branch.

The master branch is intended to be always usable, but only recommended
to users who are willing to potentially encounter bugs in new features
or as a result of other significant changes.  (In practice, this ends up
being the branch used by 99.9% of MELPA users, but that's a
MELPA-specific issue.)  Most users should use the latest stable branch.

This practice also makes it much easier for downstream packagers, like
Debian, because changes to the stable branch are ONLY bug fixes.

Could Org start doing this and call it Org 10.0?