[RFC]: Branch based version control, and development version

[simon-mo]

Motivation.

Currently, vLLM manages the release and development version all through the main branch:

• vllm.__version__ = A while A is the current public version being released
• When it is time to bump the version to B, a PR is submitted setting vllm.__version__ = B.
• Then a git tag will be applied to that commit, or typically few hotfix commits later.
• The git tag will be picked up by GitHub workflows and built wheels.
• The git tag will also show up on the GitHub release page.

It presents some challenges

• At any given, the development version is equivalent to the released version
• No branching meaning the main branch included some potentially hotfixes
• Patch release becomes difficult as we always release from the main branch

Proposed Change.

I think this RFC is open for suggestions.

One straw man proposal is as follows, which roughly follows the way in ray-project/ray:

• Keep the version in the main branch v0.k+1.0.dev0 where k is the current minor version
• When it is time to cut a new release, the release manager creates a new branch and set the version to v0.k.j, creates the tag and cherry-pick any hot fixes.

The downside of this approach is the cumbersomeness of cherry-picks. But the upside is the ease of version management.

Feedback Period.

Open until concensus

CC List.

@WoosukKwon @robertgshaw2-neuralmagic @khluu @dgoupil @lanking520

Any Other Things.

No response

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