0014 — The first public version is 0.1.0, cut only when a readiness checklist is green¶
- Status: accepted
- Date: 2026-09-06
- Deciders: @kalwei
Context¶
The project had been developed privately since 2026-08-28 and carried no public version. Two questions were tangled together: what to call the first release, and when it may be cut. The private era's own tags had run past 0.3, and the tree still contained personal paths and wording that would be permanent once published.
Options considered¶
| Option | For | Against |
|---|---|---|
0.1.0, gated on a written checklist |
the number matches what a first public release of anything is; the gate is a list of facts, so "ready" is checkable rather than a mood | resets the version the private history had reached, so the private tags and the public ones do not line up |
1.0.0 |
signals confidence to a plant evaluating it | a promise about API stability the project cannot keep yet, and it can only be made once |
| Continue the private tag sequence | one continuous history | the public repository starts from a clean first commit (0007); a 0.3.1 with one commit behind it invites the wrong question |
Decision¶
The first public release is 0.1.0. It is cut only when a readiness checklist is green in three parts: what must be fixed by a commit (no employer or customer names, the rule the conduct file asks of everyone, no personal paths, no stale provenance claims, lab-only credentials named as such and logged when in force), what must exist as a file (security policy, conduct, governance, maintainers, changelog, citation, issue forms, CI workflows, and the documentation site), and what needs a click nobody else can make (the package index publisher, repository visibility, branch protection, the documentation domain). Readiness is not permission: publication is a separate, explicit go-ahead.
Consequences¶
Easy: the argument about whether the project is ready becomes a list somebody can read. Hard: the checklist is only as good as the checking, and one line of it — build the wheel and run it from a clean install before tagging — was skipped on release day and cost three tags in one evening (0018).
House rules touched¶
None.