This is a bit of a brain dump so stick with me… :D

Version numbers are a funny thing

For a piece of software like Alfred, where I release regularly and each release adds quite a bit of extra awesome, they essentially mean not much other than ‘this release is newer’. For users though, a major number gets people excited, it gets people talking!.. I mean going from a 0.9.x to a 1.0 is exciting regardless of whats added, no? Of course it is (I’m SUPER excited).

With that in mind, I have kind of backed myself into a corner by jumping to 0.9.9. It’s true that 1.0 is the next release and really, it’s a major milestone for Alfred - The culmination of almost 2 years of my hard work bringing Alfred to the point where he has really earned a major release number… BUT that means if I want to do a quick maintenance release, I am forced to use some sort of silly numbering scheme!

Maintenance Release

Why do I want to do another little release before 1.0 then? It’s not really because there are broken things in 0.9.9… I just want to fix a few minor issues which have been affecting a small number of users along with testing my new repository / automated build and release system in the run up to the major 1.0 release.

Plus, Alfred is mine, which means I can essentially [puts on jerry springer guest voice] do what I want! ;)

So that begs the question, what can I call it… (thinking out loud):

0.9.9.9 - no that’s just silly
0.9.9 SE - Special edition, mmmm special.
0.9.9 ME - millennium edition, yep, that has a GREAT stigma attached to it ;)
Snow 0.9.9 - Apple have used this, why can’t I? :P
0.9.8 - hah that wouldn’t be confusing AT ALL! ;)
0.9.9 Service Pack 1 - how terribly formal and inappropriate
0.9.9m1 - hmm not bad, better than the others.

Any better suggestions?

Tweet me @preppeller and I will update this post later :P

And the verdict is…

After many MANY tweets (thanks all), the verdict is 0.9.10 which is synonymous with all sorts of software, even OS X itself :)

Cheers,
Andrew