JEP 223: New Version-String Scheme

[mark.reinhold at oracle.com]

2014/11/5 3:09 -0800, martijnverburg at gmail.com:
> At the risk of bike-shedding... :-)

Heh.  Version-string syntax, I have learned the hard way, is the
ultimate bike-shed topic.

> I love the move towards semantic versioning.  But I can see a potential
> clash in people's (and tools!) understanding between the major.minor.patch
> and major.minor.security. Is there a possibility of using a 4th to indicate
> security separately from what people will likely assume is strictly the
> patch level? e.g. 9.0.3.10

The proposal as it stands leaves the fourth (and later) version-number
elements free for downstream consumers of the JDK code base (including
Oracle) to use any way they choose.  Some of these consumers may well
want more than one element.  Putting the security level in the third
position makes that both possible and easy to explain.

- Mark