VyOS Networks Blog

Historically, we used to use "999.$timestamp" version numbers for development builds, including nightly builds. In our build scripts termninology, a development build is any build that is started without doing "./configure --build-type=release --version=1.2.0" or similar (before the build script rewrite that was "./configure --with-release-build" and you also needed to put a version string in livecd/version or somethinf like that). In short, most builds in existence had that nondescript 999 version. That's how it was before the fork and we just didn't change that.

However, that approach is rather problematic. The 999 version doesn't tell anything about the branch it's built from or the nearest release, so one can only guess from the timestamp what it might be, and even that is not reliable. With introduction of a rolling release that will exist alongside the stable releases, this gets even more problematic, so something needs to be done about it.

We decided to change the format to "$release-rolling+$timestamp", like "1.2.0-rolling+201804060100". I have some hesitations about the "+", so if people think it should rather be "-", we can change it.

If you visit https://downloads.vyos.io/?dir=rolling/current/amd64 , you can see the new naming scheme in action. Let us know if you experience any problems with it!