XBMC future versioning and codenames

The XBMC project have decided to adopt Ubuntu’s Year.Month versioning for all of our future XBMC stable point-releases. This means that if we hold true to the current XBMC roadmap schedule then the next ‘Gold’ release should be released in October 2008 and will thus have the version 8.10 (so “8″ stands for the year 2008 and “10″ stands for the 10th month of the year which is October).

Team-XBMC plan is try to put together two stable released each year which will first get a codename and then later a number version once it makes ‘Gold’. One release will be made in April each year and another release in October each year.

We will also be using codenames for each planned release up until the ‘Gold’ (general availablity release)’ of that version has been released. The codename is not just a bit of fun but actually serves a practical purpose when using Ubuntu’s Year.Month versioning, as the codename is used during the Alpha, Beta, and Release Candidate development stages instead of a number to reference that version just in case we would to miss planned release month, (releasing version called 8.10 in November of 2008 would not make since when using Ubuntu’s Year.Month versioning as described above, that version would then be called 8.11 instead as November is the 11th month of the year).

The code name for the upcoming release is Atlantis. We made the decision to pick codenames that reference locations in popular TV-series to have the codenames be media related, (Atlantis for example reference “Stargate Atlantis“). Will be choosing the codenames alphabetically, so this upcoming release codename as you can now read starts with the letter “A”, and the codename for the next release which is scheduled to be released in April 2009 will begin with the letter “B”, (and if we manage to get the ‘Gold’ versions of that out in April 2009 then it will carry the version 9.04 with again the “9″ part standing for 2009 and the “04″ part standing for the 4th month of the year which is April). As such in October of 2009 we plan to release version 9.10 of XBMC with it until then having a codename that begins with the letter “C”, and in April of 2010 the plan is to release version 10.04 of XBMC with it until then having a codename that begins with the letter “D”, and so on and so on…

Examples of possible codenames:

• Fox River (as in Fox River State Penitentiary from Prison Break)
• Primatech (as in Primatech Paper Co. from Heroes)
• Orchid (a Dharma station in Lost)

Obviously these are just examples of possible codenames, no names after Atlantis have yet been picked.

For more information about software release life cycle please please read this this wikipedia article.