Please explain build numbers

[danf84]

Can someone explain to me how VB's build numbers are generated?
What I find puzzling is the branch release 4.0.16/VirtualBox-4.0.16-75491 has build number higher than 4.1.8/VirtualBox-4.1.8-75467. I am obviously missing something.... thx dan

[Perryg]

The r number (the last 5 digits) is part of the changset. There didn't used to be a separation and the support for older releases was not backported (or at least as much).
They have gone to supporting (backporting & branched) to a release that they also use to build the OracleVM 3.* with and this has started the odd numbering. AFAIK.

[danf84]

Thanks. This makes sense now, as far as svn revisions are concerned, since I now know those are always incrementing per commit anywhere within the repository, so an ancient branch once changed would get the latest rev number. How come the rev numbers in the repository are all around 38000-39000, not around 75000 mark like the releases? Also they make references to these revisions like "39774 2 days vboxsync: NAT: backed out r75718.", and they link to https://www.virtualbox.org/changeset/75718 but there's no such changeset found. Can you explain that please?

[Perryg]

That's because there is a DEV branch that gets ported to the SVN branch. Otherwise the SVN branch would be broken most of the time waiting for the rest of what they are working on to make it in.

[Technologov]

The 38000-39000 range is for VirtualBox_OSE (Open-Source Edition), around 75000 range is Oracle VirtualBox (they build VirtualBox + non-free extensions together, but put into separate packages -- non-free stuff goes into "ext-pack").

Changes from Oracle internal SVN are propagated automatically into the OSE SVN tree.

[Perryg]

Changes from Oracle internal SVN are propagated automatically into the OSE SVN tree.

I disagree here tech. The svn tree is updated when they tell it too, and is not automatic as you state. And unless the DEVs have told you something different the numbering is how I said it was. Plus everything in the svn is open source my friend.

[Technologov]

Ok, maybe manual. Not sure.