[Python-Dev] Marking packaging-related PEPs as Finished after fixing some bugs in them (original) (raw)

Steven D'Aprano steve at pearwood.info
Tue Feb 28 01:30:59 CET 2012

Terry Reedy wrote:

On 2/27/2012 6:50 AM, Antoine Pitrou wrote:

'rc' makes sense to most people while 'c' is generally unheard of. 'rc' following 'a' and 'b' only makes sense to people who are used to it and know what it means. 'c' for 'candidate' makes more sense to me both a decade ago and now. 'rc' is inconsistent. Why not 'ra' for 'release alpha' or 'ar' for 'alpha release'? In other words, all releases are releases, so why not be consistent and either always or never include 'r'? (Never would be better since always is redundant.) I suspect many non-developer users find 'rc' as surprising as I did.

Yes, but you should only find it surprising once, the first time you learn about the standard release schedule:

pre-alpha alpha beta release candidate production release

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle

Not all releases are equivalent. In English, we can not only verbify nouns, but we can also nounify verbs. So, yes, any software which is released is a release; but only the last, production-ready release is the release. The others are pre-release releases.

Ain't English grand?

If if you prefer a more wordy but slightly less confusing way of saying it, they are pre-release versions which have been released.

This reply of mine on the python-list list may also be relevant:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2012-February/1288569.html

-- Steven

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