Choosing an initial target version of Julia

[jrevels]

Our first task in this repo, I believe, is to decide what version of Julia we'll want to try to target with our initial release.

The latest stable build, v0.3, is advantageous because it has been very thoroughly tested and is, well, stable. We'd have a more solid platform to build from and debugging would probably end up being easier as a result.

The other obvious option is to target v0.4, which means we'd be working off of the master branch until v0.4 is released. There are many drastic changes that may be delivered in v0.4, the majority of which I find extremely desirable:

• call overloading
• call to convert fallback
• Potential development of Tim Holy's Traits trick
• The resolution of the vector transpose issue
• Cleanup of A_mul_B etc.

Developing off of master will force us to contribute back to Julia's development when language bugs crop up, or we realize we desire certain features (IMO, a good opportunity for those of us who haven't already contributed heavily to core Julia). We'd also be in a perfect position once v0.4 goes stable, since we'd be developing from it all along. Unfortunately, working to support v0.4 could mean a lot of wasted work if we put effort into supporting features that get removed.

Just to get discussion going, I vote we focus the master branch at the latest stable v0.3 and make a v0.4 branch to try and keep up with the more recent developments. Then we can switch over whenever the time comes. Thoughts?

[jiahao]

Unless there are any 0.4 features that would significantly alter how the code is structured, I would just focus on getting things to work on 0.3. Support for 0.4 only makes sense when the versions bump from 0.4-dev-xxx to 0.4-pre-xxx, since more breaking changes are in the works.

[Jutho]

I guess this decision also depends by what time one expects to have some reasonably useful functionality? For the things I am working on, I am sufficiently realistic to know that by the time they will reach a v0.1 status, julia v0.4 will certainly be ready. Combining that with the several advantages of the new technologies already in 0.4-dev, I certainly don't attempt to obtain 0.3 compatibility in my projects. But the situation can be different for QuBase.jl so I have no preference here.

[acroy]

I think for now we should focus on v0.3, also because it is more convenient to work with. Having an experimental branch sounds like a good idea though.

[jrevels]

Seems like v0.3 is the least contested, and will be easiest to keep up with as we're starting. I'm going to close this issue and say that's the build we should focus on.

@Jutho I'm definitely open to having a 0.4 branch at any time, if you want to make one.