Growing major version

Posted Feb 13, 2026 16:09 UTC (Fri) by alx.manpages (subscriber, #145117)
In reply to: Growing major version by corbet
Parent article: The first half of the 7.0 merge window

FWIW, I've decided to settle the man-pages project at major version 6 for as long as I'm the lead maintainer. Once someone else takes care of it, it would grow to 7. That would happen less often. And then, major version is somewhat meaningful.

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Growing major version

Posted Feb 17, 2026 23:30 UTC (Tue) by aphedges (subscriber, #171718) [Link] (2 responses)

Given how close the man-pages version is to the kernel version, I assumed the versioning was tied together. Is them both being 6.1x just a coincidence?

Growing major version

Posted Feb 17, 2026 23:36 UTC (Tue) by alx.manpages (subscriber, #145117) [Link] (1 responses)

They have been tied in the past.

When Michael was the lead maintainer, he followed the kernel version closely (weeks or a month).

I have been following it too, more or less, but not so closely. I wasn't happy by the fact that the project also documents glibc, but the versioning and name seems to imply that it only cares about the kernel. I think decoupling the versioning would be positive.

And after all, the version of the manual pages isn't very meaningful. We sometimes document stuff from the next kernel release, before it's even released.

The rule of thumb should be: always take the latest version of the manual pages. We never remove information (with very few exceptions). And being documentation, you don't risk regressions (or they are less dangerous than software regressions).

Growing major version

Posted Feb 17, 2026 23:40 UTC (Tue) by aphedges (subscriber, #171718) [Link]

Good to know. Thanks for clarifying!