gistfile1.js

// Currently going to latest.civicrm.org/stable.php outputs:
4.5.2

// Proposed new output (B)
[
  {version: "4.4.0"},
  {version: "4.4.1"},
  {version: "4.4.2", security: true}
  {version: "4.5.0"},
  {version: "4.5.1"},
  {version: "4.5.2", security: true}
  ...
]

// Proposed new layout (C)
[
  "4.4": [
    {version: "4.4.0"},
    {version: "4.4.1"},
    {version: "4.4.2", security: true}
  },
  "4.5":
    {version: "4.5.0"},
    {version: "4.5.1"},
    {version: "4.5.2", security: true}
  ]
  ...
]

Another thought: what if we also include a datestamp for each release in the json? Seems like a generally useful thing to have, but my specific reason for including it is that you could compare the dates of security releases to find out if there is a more recent security release on a later majorVersion, which would mostly tell you if your older version is still secure (it wouldn't account for security issues that only affect later versions, but at least that means it errs on the side of caution). A fully comprehensive solution, if we want to go there, would be to also include an array of versions affected by a security release, like:

{
  "4.4": [
    {version: "4.4.0", date: "2013-01-02"},
    {version: "4.4.1", date: "2013-02-03"},
    {version: "4.4.2", date: "2013-03-04", security: true, affects: ["4.1", "4.2", "4.3", "4.4.0", "4.4.1"]}
  ]
  ...
}

Agree that it's a good convention for BranchNames to match MajorVersions - and we can usually speak of them interchangably. There are cases where they don't match (e.g. "master" vs "4.6" at time of writing) or where matching would be nonsensical (e.g. "master-civimail-abtest" is a long-running feature-branch). It's conceivable that we could change SCM software (svn/bzr/hg/etc) or SCM-conventions (git-flow,etc). Regardless of what happens to SCM, though, we would still speak about releases using MajorVersions and MinorVersions. From the perspective of a client deciding whether to upgrade, it only needs to understand version#s -- not SCM.

+1 for including the release-dates.

-1 for the comprehensive solution (for the moment). I think it would be nice to publish more detailed info about version#s and SAs, but processing that requires more work at every level (spec + publishing + consuming; upfront + ongoing). Publishing version#s and dates is a good bite-sized project (for the moment).

Let's move further discussion to https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-13672 since gist doesn't support email notifications.