[seelmobile]

(Disclosure: I work at Google on public APIs, opinions are my own)

Google's proposed a "stability" semantic as a third option[0]. TL;DR no breaking changes in the Stable channel but you can add backwards-compatible[1] features in-place.

A permanent Beta channel that's a superset of Stable lets users choose how change-tolerant they are. This lets API producers launch features earlier, knowing they will only impact risk tolerant users if breaking changes are needed. Theoretically this reduces the need for breaking changes in Stable, which require a new Major version.

[0] https://aip.dev/181 [1] https://aip.dev/180

[keithwhor]

Do you think it’s possible to achieve the same sort of system by just using semver + release candidates?

For example, 5.x.x is currently stable, so you release 6.0.0-rc1 (2, 3, ...)?