Given that AudioMan works on people's data and could -- in the future when it starts dealing with id3v2 for example -- corrupt or delete files, I think I'm going to have to have at least two active branches going at the same time. A lot of projects follow this system, including the Linux kernel and Bugzilla.

Version 0.2.0 will be the first release in the stable 0.2 branch and after that it will be updated with bug fixes only. This way people can use releases in the 0.2 branch knowing that it has predictable, though limited, behaviour. Not everyone wants to be on the bleeding edge.

At the same time I release 0.2.0 I will start the 0.3 branch, which is where all of the new development will go. The bug fixes that are done to the 0.2 branch will be done on 0.3 if they still apply. The odd second number means that the 0.3 branch is frequently unstable and is under development. When interim releases like 0.3.1, 0.3.2, etc are done they will be in a semi-stable state to get user feedback.

When the 0.3 branch is mature and stable enough it will branch off to 0.4 and 0.5. Until the 0.4 branch has been used a lot and trusted people may still be cautious so the 0.2 branch will have to be maintained during that time. Eventually 0.2 will either run out of bugs to fix or users and will be retired.

Like 0.3, the 0.5 branch is where the new features will go after 0.4 branches off. Then the cycle repeats itself. I'd like to keep the iterations fairly short, so that stable branches are released regularly. This way people can get new features more often and don't have to take their chances on the unstable branch. I'm thinking maximum two months between stable versions unless a major change of architecture takes place.

When does AudioMan go to 1.0? That's hard to say but I definitely have some features in mind that I want to get in before 1.0 is released. Right now it's just too far away to think about, so I'll just keep iterating and hopefully people will keep giving me feedback.

I'm not sure how to do branches in CVS so it could be very fun figuring that out. Eclipse seems to have branch support but I have never used it. When I get it sorted I'll be sure to blog it.