Bitcoin-qt.app 0.8.1 on Mac identifies as "v0.8.1-beta"?

[HanSolo]

I've installed the Bitcoin-qt client from the Sourceforge download...

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.8.1/bitcoin-0.8.1-macosx.dmg/download

...with SHA1 matching...

5b47f0b7727a64893ac63068e39ebf126e8afdd1

The 'About Bitcoin' dialog declares it to be "v0.8.1-beta". Was this an error in packaging? Or are even final releases being called 'beta'?

[gweedo]

yes the bitcoin protocol is in beta.

[Raoul Duke]

Bitcoin is still in Beta. Version 1.0 is still far away.

[HanSolo]

Bitcoin is still in Beta. Version 1.0 is still far away.

Understood, thanks!

I more commonly see that "-beta" version-number suffix used as meaning, "this is a beta version of 0.8.1, the real 0.8.1 is coming later".  And, if "-beta" is considered part of the canonical version identifier, it would help to also include it in the announcement of availability, download file name, and Github branch name. (Even saying, "Beta-0.8.1", as a prefix rather than suffix, would help avoid conflict with common practice elsewhere.)

Tom Preston-Werner of Github has a nice attempt at formalizing the practices I'm most familiar with in his "Semantic Versioning" proposal:

http://semver.org/