[Mono-dev] Planning: Mono version numbers.

[Andreas Färber]

Hello,

I agree that the Mono version will never directly tell a user whether  
a certain API is usable or not.

Instead, this information is distributed over the Bugzilla system and  
multiple Wiki pages, with most "interesting" Wiki pages being much  
too hidden. Personally, I usually end up typing the Wiki page names  
manually because I often can't find an easy way to navigate to them  
via the website itself.

Therefore I think we rather need a better information policy on  
what's working and what's planned, targeted at .NET developers (as  
opposed to the core Mono developers). It might prove helpful to  
actually create a new progress page, linked from the main page,  
containing a brief status overview for individual components that are  
or will and will not be available (e.g. a table with colors  
detailling status of SVN HEAD and the latest release). Such an  
overview page could then link to the existing class-level status  
pages (which has more information than a casual user expects) and to  
all the existing individual pages describing the actual technologies.

Today, there's a Plans page, only linking to technology pages, and  
there's the slides as a snapshot of what was available and planned at  
that particular point in time.

Given that such status information is provided in a convenient and  
centralized way, Mono could continue with its own versioning scheme  
and 1.3.x for the next breaking changes instead of having to talk of  
a distant-sounding upcoming 2.0 version and holding back breaking  
changes until then.

Andreas