On naming of Jackson 2.11 pre-release version: alpha vs rcX vs mX

[Tatu Saloranta]

I am finally hoping to (soon, very soon!) release the first (and
possibly only) pre-release version of Jackson 2.11. But due to
problems with earlier choice of qualifier -- "pr" (for pre-release)
is, alas, NOT something Maven recognizes as per:

https://octopus.com/blog/maven-versioning-explained

and as a result, earlier use of `2.10.0.pr1` (or `.pre1`) did lead to
unfortunate problem of `2.10.0` being sorted "before" pre-release
candidates. This is only resolved with 2.10.1 becoming "later" than
`2.10.0.pr1`.

As a result I created issue:

https://github.com/FasterXML/jackson-databind/issues/2479

to decide on what to use instead. Since I hope to get this decided
quickly (does not seem like something to discuss for weeks :) ), I
suggest 3 options that are my top choices:

* alpha, beta (, delta, gamma) -- 2.11.0.alpha
* rc1, rc2 (, rc3, ...) ["release candidate"] -- 2.11.0.rc1
* m1, m2 (, m3, ...) ["milestone"] -- 2.11.0.m1

and would like to hear if anyone has a preference to share, points to
make, to select the convention Jackson project should use.

To me it seems that "rc1" might be the most commonly used for Java
libraries, but I think I have seen all 3 styles in use.

Also note:

1. all these choices will sort before (be considered "older") than
actual official "2.11.0" (tested briefly, all documentation confirms)
2. I have seen some projects (Hibernate?) use "Final" or "GA" as
qualifier (like, "2.11.0.GA"), but I do not see a point for doing
that.
3. Use of hyphen "-" would otherwise be fine ("2.11.0-rc1") but in the
past it has been reported to be problematic for OSGi. This is why
"all-dots" notation has been, and is planned to be, used.

So. WDYT?

-+ Tatu +-

[Tatu Saloranta]

Also: there's Twitter poll that's convenient:

https://twitter.com/fasterxml/status/1238519171350069250

and may be better way to handle this. For those not on TWTR, I'll
count your votes too. :)

-+ Tatu +-

[Tatu Saloranta]

Results are in: as per Twitter poll, the winner is "2.11.0.rc1" by 75% of votes.
I will plan on using it, and do the first pre-release candidate soon,
within a week.

This will not likely be the actual release (some smaller fixes will go
in very likely), but
most new features should be in, as well as behavioral changes -- my
main goal is to try
to find regressions regarding behavior, and let users some time to
give feedback before
finalizing changes. For what it is worth, here is the current set of changes:

https://github.com/FasterXML/jackson/wiki/Jackson-Release-2.11

-+ Tatu +-