Your message dated Fri, 11 Aug 2017 12:44:51 -0700
with message-id <87o9rlx51o....@iris.silentflame.com>
and subject line Closing inactive Policy bugs
has caused the Debian Bug report #798714,
regarding debian-policy: Please explicitly recommend punctuation between the
year, month and day components of date based version numbers
to be marked as done.
This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.
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798714: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=798714
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact ow...@bugs.debian.org with problems
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Package: debian-policy
Severity: wishlist
Version: 3.9.6.1
Hi,
§3.2.1 currently reads:
> […] the date-based portion of any upstream version number should be
> given in a way that sorts correctly: four-digit year first, followed
> by a two-digit numeric month, followed by a two-digit numeric date,
> possibly with punctuation between the components.
>
> […] If punctuation is desired between the date components, remember
> that hyphen (-) cannot be used in native package versions. Period (.)
> is normally a good choice.
Unfortunately this led to quite a lot of package with version numbers
less readable than before and hence less easier to compare manually.
Well-known examples include debhelper, ca-certificates and now
unfortunately also lsb-base.
To demonstrate my point, please sort the following version numbers in
your head:
* 20110111.0
* 20101111.1
* 20111111.2
* 9.20111211
* 9.20111121
And now compare the same dates, but written with punctuation:
* 2011.01.11.0
* 2010.11.11.1
* 2011.11.11.2
* 9.2011.12.11
* 9.2011.11.21
So please change the above cited policy section in a way that it is
clear that the "YYYY.MM.DD" format is preferred and the format without
punctuation between the year, month and day components is discouraged.
Here's a suggestion for an updated text:
| […] the date-based portion of any upstream version number should be
| given in a way that sorts correctly: four-digit year first, followed
| by a two-digit numeric month, followed by a two-digit numeric date,
| with punctuation between the components.
|
| […] Since punctuation is desired between the date components, remember
| that hyphen (-) cannot be used in native package versions. Period (.)
| is the recommended choice.
P.S.: Yes, I'm aware that this doesn't help much for existing badly
formatted date-based version numbers, as it would need an epoch to
change it. But since many packages (like e.g. debhelper) use a prefix
number anyway (e.g. 9.20150811), this could be changed when the date
prefix is bumped the next time, e.g. to 10.2015.09.23 or so. And if
someone thinks that makes it less obvious where the date starts, a
different delimiter before the date could be chosen, e.g. 10+2015.09.23.
Regards, Axel
--
,''`. | Axel Beckert <a...@debian.org>, http://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' : | Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
`. `' | 1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486 202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE
`- | 4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329 6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5
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--- Begin Message ---
control: user debian-pol...@packages.debian.org
control: usertag -1 +obsolete
control: tag -1 +wontfix
Russ Allbery and I did a round of in-person bug triage at DebConf17 and
we are closing this bug as inactive.
The reasons for closing fall into the following categories, from most
frequent to least frequent:
- issue is appropriate for Policy, there is a consensus on how to fix
the problem, but preparing the patch is very time-consuming and no-one
has volunteered to do it, and we do not judge the issue to be
important enough to keep an open bug around;
- issue is appropriate for Policy but there does not yet exist a
consensus on what should change, and no recent discussion. A fresh
discussion might allow us to reach consensus, and the messages in the
old bug are unlikely to help very much; or
- issue is not appropriate for Policy.
If you feel this bug is still relevant and want to restart the
discussion, you can re-open the bug. However, please consider instead
opening a new bug with a message that summarises and condenses the
previous discussion, updates the report for the current state of Debian,
and makes clear exactly what you think should change.
A lot of these old bugs have long side tangents and numerous messages,
and that old discussion is not necessarily helpful for figuring out what
Debian Policy should say today.
--
Sean Whitton
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