What is Redmine 2.5.xd?¶

I use the version number “2.5.xd” to mark the version of Redmine in Debian 8.x stable (jessie). The “d” here stands for “Debian”.

Why do I use an own version number?¶

The Redmine package in Debian 8.x has the version number “3.0~20140825”:

$ dpkg -s redmine | grep '^Version'
Version: 3.0~20140825-8~deb8u3

But, Debian’s Redmine itself claims, that its version is “2.5.2.devel”:

$ ruby bin/about
...
Environment:
  Redmine version                2.5.2.devel
...

None is actually true - it’s not Redmine 2.5.2 and it’s not Redmine 3.0. Considering, that both version numbers are, in fact, wrong, I decided to introduce a new one, so I could refer to it without confusion.

How come, that the Debian’s version of Redmine is wrong?¶

Before releasing Debian 8.x jessie, Debian guys switched to Rails 4. But, the stable version of Redmine at that time (2.5.x) did not support Rails 4 yet.

However, Redmine guys had already been working on porting the application to Rails 4 in a separate branch. It was Redmine 3.0 in progress. But, as it was not ready for release yet, its internal version remained “2.5.2.devel” (there was no need to change it, actually).

Considering the above, Debian guys had two options: 1) release Debian 8.x without Redmine or 2) use the not-yet- finished and released future Redmine 3.0 (i.e., to use the code from the corresponding branch). So, they chose the second option.

Is Debian’s Redmine 2.6.x, maybe?¶

No. Changes, that were made to Redmine 2.6.x, were merged into the aforementioned branch after it was used by Debian guys. So, these changes did not come into Debian’s version of Redmine.

So, what is it then?¶

In fact, it’s 2.5.x, that has been ported to Rails 4. Therefore, it should work with plugins for Redmine 3.0. Plugins for Redmine 2.5.x most likely won’t work under Debian’s Redmine (there can be exceptions).