On Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:08:33 +1000, Ben Finney <[email protected]>
wrote:
Floris Bruynooghe <[email protected]> writes:
On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 08:10:05PM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
> Well then, I don't see a way forward on the issue of helping
> distributors to manage version numbers sanely. I don't know of any
> operating system package manager that returns different comparison
> results depending on what specific letters are used in the version
> string.
Alpha, beta and release candidate releases have been around for ages
and I imagine most distributors have figured out a way of coping with
this.
That doesn't answer the point raised, though. Isn't a major reason for
all this work to help the downstream distributors to help migrate *away*
from munging version strings and toward version strings that compare
sanely as-is?
In Debian's case 1.0a1 would become 1.0~a1 for example (IIRC), which
sorts before 1.0.
That's exactly the sort of hack I would hope would no longer be
necessary for version strings formed under an improved version
comparison specification.
Forgive me for saying so, but this looks strongly like abandoning the
criterion of “make it easier for distributors than it is at present”.
By having this standard, distributors do have an easier time. They can
transform these version numbers automatically, just as they do many other
things to upstream packages automatically to turn them into a distro
package.
So no, the goal of making it easier for distributors is not being
abandoned.
Jean-Paul
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