On Tuesday, March 4, 2003, at 05:21 AM, Max Horn wrote:
Quite apparently we have different stances on this. So, please explain, how exactly do you think this version fudging should work, w/o confusing users by using completly different versions than the rest of the world for a given package?
I didn't quote the debian manual before, but here are some:
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-versions.html
"epoch
This is a single (generally small) unsigned integer. It may be omitted, in which case zero is assumed. If it is omitted then the upstream_version may not contain any colons.
It is provided to allow mistakes in the version numbers of older versions of a package, and also a package's previous version numbering schemes, to be left behind. "
and later..
.
"Note that the purpose of epochs is to allow us to leave behind mistakes in version numbering, and to cope with situations where the version numbering scheme changes. It is not intended to cope with version numbers containing strings of letters which the package management system cannot interpret (such as ALPHA or pre- ), or with silly orderings (the author of this manual has heard of a package whose versions went 1.1 ,1.2 ,1.3 ,1,2.1 ,2.2 ,2and so forth).
If an upstream package has problematic version numbers they should be converted to a sane form for use in the Version field. "
I interpret that last sentence to mean "fudge the version if you have to. Just don't use epoch unless its an error or upstream versioning system change"
-Ben
