The versioning potpourri of the last year is pathological. Let’s start there. There’s no reason for the same da*n release to have 3 different major version identifiers in the same 12 month period.

@arjen I agree with your comments and share the confusion of the others who’ve emailed you.

My “everybody else” is based on emails and blog comments, and questions we get at user groups and conference. None of these people has the feeling that they have an overview of what’s going on with either versions or active development at Sun/MySQL.

Now, you may declare them all to be blind and say “just look up page X” and “check your sources”, but that’s not really helpful is it.When users say these things, it generally means that the info out there is somehow not clear.

Having to check versioning inside a repo tree is silly, the branch naming should indicate it. Unless you’re familiar with the sourcecode, it’s actually not that easy to find. So yes I can find it, but on behalf of all those who can’t and actually don’t care to, it shouldn’t be necessary.

You’re the first “source” this week to effectively imply that 6.0 is not abandoned. However, you’re not actually a source as such since you’re anonymous, plus it lacks specifics. You’re just being crankypants.

Re release method change announcements, they’re meaningless. Noone cares for announcements since so many things were announced before that then never happened. Development-in-public, and actual releases, are what people look for. MySQL used to do this, I’m sure it can again.

Hand waving.

> One of the comments I received was a ref to a completely different
> branch name on LP, but it’s not particularly descriptive is it?

Only if you didn’t pay attention to the development cycle announcement.

> Am I supposed to guess that this is in fact a) 5.5 and b) the focus
> of development?

No, but speculating is easy, isn’t it? You could have read the development cycle wiki, asked on one of the various mailing lists, etc.

> Furthermore, yes I see various somewhat active branches on
> launchpad, but from many it’s impossible to see what version
> they belong to.

I can see their versions with a few clicks…

> Many of them actually refer to 6.0, which the world was told
> was abandoned.

You need to check your sources…

> Commonly, branches are named after their parent branch, + a tag
> indicating who/what. For lack of any branch named 5.5, that approach
> does not work here.

There is a reason branches are named how they are. Read up the development cycle wiki.

> From the responses so far, the “don’t you know!?” comments come
> from dear former colleagues at Sun/MySQL, whereas everybody else
> is just as confused as I am.

Yes, everybody else…

Since I was told there was a 5.5, it’s not unreasonable to look for a branch that has “Series: 5.5″ noted. There isn’t.
One of the comments I received was a ref to a completely different branch name on LP, but it’s not particularly descriptive is it? Am I supposed to guess that this is in fact a) 5.5 and b) the focus of development?
Furthermore, yes I see various somewhat active branches on launchpad, but from many it’s impossible to see what version they belong to. Many of them actually refer to 6.0, which the world was told was abandoned.
Commonly, branches are named after their parent branch, + a tag indicating who/what. For lack of any branch named 5.5, that approach does not work here.

From the responses so far, the “don’t you know!?” comments come from dear former colleagues at Sun/MySQL, whereas everybody else is just as confused as I am. This might indicate that there’s some relevance to the issue.