Re: Repository version precedence
Having consistency is definitely in ours and Maven's best interest. We (us and the Maven guys) need to examine how people manage their versions. Derby is clearly a case where 4 elements is standard. I also agree with David that more dots isn't necessarily good but I've also noticed on the user list that people like jars with and without version numbers. The point is that there are a number of standards that are not necessarily consistent. More inline... David Jencks wrote: On May 30, 2006, at 10:49 AM, Joe Bohn wrote: Am I the only one concerned about this? I think this is an important issue for our users. They won't have the luxury to wait for a completely new Geronimo image to fix a problem with an embedded component. They will also face these issues with their own versioned application modules. I would appreciate your input. Thanks, Joe Overall I think we need to keep consistent with maven on this. Having slightly different rules for geronimo compared to maven will create more confusion that any advantage we might gain. There's also some desire to actually use the maven classes to work with repositories and artifacts, which would make it even more likely that we follow maven conventions. Being consistent is good. However, Geronimo is a separate project and I think we need to also be defensive as well. IMHO that means consistency is good but remembering that users of Geronimo could probably care less about our build tool. Notes on the user list seem to indicate the users see our adoption of Maven paradigms confusing and of no additional value to them. I certainly think that we need very clear documentation on what the version numbers mean. Yup I think we might be able to work with maven to come up with some additional possibilities. I think that our basic use case that maven may not support too well is producing a private build of an artifact that is already released from an outside project. Currently the only ways to do this are by incrementing a build number (which can conflict with an official later release) or by incrementing the incremental version and including a qualifier: so 5.5.15 gets replaced by 5.5.16-MyPrivateBuild I think the above is confusing. I would expect this to be a component that is modeled on 5.5.16 + something else. I think something like: 5.5.15-*patch*n...n implies we started with 5.5.15 and this jar is that + something. Using a specific suffix like PATCH and some number would eliminate and ambiguity. I think if Maven defined that naming convention that would help us all. which will in turn be replaced by any official 5.5.16 release from the project. I'm not sure what problems this last might cause. Perhaps we could lobby maven for a special qualifier keyword that is after all build numbers? e.g. 5.5.15-PRIVATE-23455 Yup...I prefer PATCH; the question is does this imply a whole replacement for the component. I would think that is easiest but thought we should clarify. A couple more comments inlne thanks david jencks Joe Bohn wrote: I'm trying to get my head around the way that we make a version selection when multiple versions of a package are available. This will be important as users need to include different versions of packages beyond what geronimo bundles or if they need to override a package with a local version. I was working with the tomcat jars and so I was looking for ways to drop in a modified version of the jars and have them picked up without removing the 5.5.15 versions. Here are the items that I tried and which was chosen when compared to 5.5.15 1) 5.5.15.1 - Apparently any version with more than 2 dots is considered invalid and so the entire version is considered to be a qualifier (with a null for the major, minor incrementalVersion, and build - basically treated as 0.0.0-"5.5.15.1"). Any valid version is considered newer. - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15.1 - 5.5.10 is chosen over 5.5.15.1 I'm not sure more dots are a good thing. 2) 5.5.15-1 - The "-" is used to specify a qualifier or buildnumber. Since the value after the dash was numeric, it was considered to be a buildnumber. It appears that a build number is always considered newer than a package without a buildnumber. - 5.5.15-1 is chosen over 5.5.15 3) 5.5.15-01 - The code (Version.java) treats the leading "0" as a special case. This makes the last part a qualifier rather than a build number. Any qualified version is considered to be lower than a non-qualified version (such as with -SNAPSHOT). Anybody know why this special check for "0" is in there? - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15-01 4) 5.5.15-alpha - If the portion following the "-" starts with an alphabetic character then this last portion is considered a qualifier. Once again, the qualified release is considered older than the same version non-qualified. - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15-alpha First, we need to document this
Re: Repository version precedence
Thanks Ian, I registered for it yesterday, but am still waiting to receive the email with the download link. Hoping it will fill in some holes in the documentation. John [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: John, Did you include "Better Builds with Maven" in your documentation search? If not, you can download the book here: http://www.mergere.com/m2book_download.jsp I haven't looked into it myself, but from what I understand it covers alot about Maven that was previously only captured within e-mail threads. Ian It's better to be hated for who you are than loved for who you are not Ian D. Stewart Appl Dev Analyst-Advisory, DCS Automation JPMorganChase Global Technology Infrastructure Phone: (614) 244-2564 Pager: (888) 260-0078 John Sisson <[EMAIL PROTECTED] om>To [email protected] 05/30/2006 11:47 cc PM Subject Re: Repository version precedence Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] he.org Joe Bohn wrote: Am I the only one concerned about this? I am also concerned, just been a bit busy to respond. See comments inline below. I think this is an important issue for our users. They won't have the luxury to wait for a completely new Geronimo image to fix a problem with an embedded component. They will also face these issues with their own versioned application modules. I would appreciate your input. Thanks, Joe Joe Bohn wrote: I'm trying to get my head around the way that we make a version selection when multiple versions of a package are available. This will be important as users need to include different versions of packages beyond what geronimo bundles or if they need to override a package with a local version. I agree with David Jencks that we should use the same rules as Maven and work with the Maven project if there is something we need from Maven that it doesn't currently provide. There isn't much official documentation on the maven site regarding version handing. Most of the documentation related to versioning I have found on mailing lists and confluence: * http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=11363360371&r=1&w=2 " - indicates that version support in maven may be enhanced in Maven 2.1. * http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Extending+Maven+2.0+Dependencies ( also accessible from the the "Extending Maven 2.0 Dependencies" link on http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Maven+2.1+Design+Documents . * http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Dependency+Mediation+and+Conflict+Resolution * http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=11314470342&r=1&w=2 I was working with the tomcat jars and so I was looking for ways to drop in a modified version of the jars and have them picked up without removing the 5.5.15 versions. Here are the items that I tried and which was chosen when compared to 5.5.15 1) 5.5.15.1 - Apparently any version with more than 2 dots is considered invalid and so the entire version is considered to be a qualifier (with a null for the major, minor incrementalVersion, and build - basically treated as 0.0.0-"5.5.15.1"). Any valid version is considered newer. - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15.1 - 5.5.10 is chosen over 5.5.15.1 Hmm, I noticed we already have dependency JARs with four numbers in it (more than 2 dots) such as the Derby JARs , e.g. 10.1.1.0 . I wonder how many JARs out there could have four or more numbers considering the maven documentation does not currently mention any restriction. 2) 5.5.15-1 - The "-" is used to specify a qualifier or buildnumber. Since the value after the dash was numeric, it was considered to be a buildnumber. It appears that a build number is always considered newer than a package without a buildnumber. - 5.5.15-1 is chosen over 5.5.15 3) 5.5.15-01 - The code (Version.java) treats the leading "0" as a special case. This makes the last part a qualifier rather than a build number. Any qualified version is considered to be lowe
Re: Repository version precedence
John, Did you include "Better Builds with Maven" in your documentation search? If not, you can download the book here: http://www.mergere.com/m2book_download.jsp I haven't looked into it myself, but from what I understand it covers alot about Maven that was previously only captured within e-mail threads. Ian It's better to be hated for who you are than loved for who you are not Ian D. Stewart Appl Dev Analyst-Advisory, DCS Automation JPMorganChase Global Technology Infrastructure Phone: (614) 244-2564 Pager: (888) 260-0078 John Sisson <[EMAIL PROTECTED] om>To [email protected] 05/30/2006 11:47 cc PM Subject Re: Repository version precedence Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED] he.org Joe Bohn wrote: > Am I the only one concerned about this? > I am also concerned, just been a bit busy to respond. See comments inline below. > I think this is an important issue for our users. They won't have the > luxury to wait for a completely new Geronimo image to fix a problem > with an embedded component. They will also face these issues with > their own versioned application modules. I would appreciate your input. > > Thanks, > Joe > > > Joe Bohn wrote: >> I'm trying to get my head around the way that we make a version >> selection when multiple versions of a package are available. This >> will be important as users need to include different versions of >> packages beyond what geronimo bundles or if they need to override a >> package with a local version. >> I agree with David Jencks that we should use the same rules as Maven and work with the Maven project if there is something we need from Maven that it doesn't currently provide. There isn't much official documentation on the maven site regarding version handing. Most of the documentation related to versioning I have found on mailing lists and confluence: * http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=11363360371&r=1&w=2 " - indicates that version support in maven may be enhanced in Maven 2.1. * http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Extending+Maven+2.0+Dependencies ( also accessible from the the "Extending Maven 2.0 Dependencies" link on http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Maven+2.1+Design+Documents . * http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Dependency+Mediation+and+Conflict+Resolution * http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=11314470342&r=1&w=2 >> I was working with the tomcat jars and so I was looking for ways to >> drop in a modified version of the jars and have them picked up >> without removing the 5.5.15 versions. Here are the items that I >> tried and which was chosen when compared to 5.5.15 >> >> 1) 5.5.15.1 >> - Apparently any version with more than 2 dots is considered invalid >> and so the entire version is considered to be a qualifier (with a >> null for the major, minor incrementalVersion, and build - basically >> treated as 0.0.0-"5.5.15.1"). Any valid version is considered newer. >> - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15.1 >> - 5.5.10 is chosen over 5.5.15.1 Hmm, I noticed we already have dependency JARs with four numbers in it (more than 2 dots) such as the Derby JARs , e.g. 10.1.1.0 . I wonder how many JARs out there could have four or more numbers considering the maven documentation does not currently mention any restriction. >> 2) 5.5.15-1 >> - The "-" is used to specify a qualifier or buildnumber. Since the >> value after the dash was numeric, it was considered to be a >> buildnumber. It appears that a build number is always considered >> newer than a package without a buildnumber. >> - 5.5.15-1 is chosen over 5.5.15 >> >> 3) 5.5.15-01 >> - The code (Version.java) treats the leading "0" as a special case. >> This makes the last part a qualifier rather than a
Re: Repository version precedence
Joe Bohn wrote: Am I the only one concerned about this? I am also concerned, just been a bit busy to respond. See comments inline below. I think this is an important issue for our users. They won't have the luxury to wait for a completely new Geronimo image to fix a problem with an embedded component. They will also face these issues with their own versioned application modules. I would appreciate your input. Thanks, Joe Joe Bohn wrote: I'm trying to get my head around the way that we make a version selection when multiple versions of a package are available. This will be important as users need to include different versions of packages beyond what geronimo bundles or if they need to override a package with a local version. I agree with David Jencks that we should use the same rules as Maven and work with the Maven project if there is something we need from Maven that it doesn't currently provide. There isn't much official documentation on the maven site regarding version handing. Most of the documentation related to versioning I have found on mailing lists and confluence: * http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=11363360371&r=1&w=2 " - indicates that version support in maven may be enhanced in Maven 2.1. * http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Extending+Maven+2.0+Dependencies ( also accessible from the the "Extending Maven 2.0 Dependencies" link on http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Maven+2.1+Design+Documents . * http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Dependency+Mediation+and+Conflict+Resolution * http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=11314470342&r=1&w=2 I was working with the tomcat jars and so I was looking for ways to drop in a modified version of the jars and have them picked up without removing the 5.5.15 versions. Here are the items that I tried and which was chosen when compared to 5.5.15 1) 5.5.15.1 - Apparently any version with more than 2 dots is considered invalid and so the entire version is considered to be a qualifier (with a null for the major, minor incrementalVersion, and build - basically treated as 0.0.0-"5.5.15.1"). Any valid version is considered newer. - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15.1 - 5.5.10 is chosen over 5.5.15.1 Hmm, I noticed we already have dependency JARs with four numbers in it (more than 2 dots) such as the Derby JARs , e.g. 10.1.1.0 . I wonder how many JARs out there could have four or more numbers considering the maven documentation does not currently mention any restriction. 2) 5.5.15-1 - The "-" is used to specify a qualifier or buildnumber. Since the value after the dash was numeric, it was considered to be a buildnumber. It appears that a build number is always considered newer than a package without a buildnumber. - 5.5.15-1 is chosen over 5.5.15 3) 5.5.15-01 - The code (Version.java) treats the leading "0" as a special case. This makes the last part a qualifier rather than a build number. Any qualified version is considered to be lower than a non-qualified version (such as with -SNAPSHOT). Anybody know why this special check for "0" is in there? - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15-01 AFAIK, the version code was taken from Maven, so might be worth asking the Maven project. 4) 5.5.15-alpha - If the portion following the "-" starts with an alphabetic character then this last portion is considered a qualifier. Once again, the qualified release is considered older than the same version non-qualified. - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15-alpha First, we need to document this behavior very clearly for users that need to replace packages we ship (or their own packages included in the repo). Second, I would like to propose some changes: - IMO a qualified release should generally be considered *newer* than a non-qualified release. I think SNAPSHOT would be the only exception. Right now we treat that exception as the rule for all qualifiers. I think we should add specific code for "SNAPSHOT" and have all other qualified releases take precedence over a non-qualified release. I can imagine users wanting to add myjar-1.1-patch1.jar to replace myjar-1.1.jar. - I think we should treat a third "." to be the logical equivalent of a "-" in the version. Most users would expect 5.5.15.1 to be major version 5, minor version 5, incremental version 15, build/rev/patch/whatever 1 and consider this to be newer than 5.5.15. See #1 above for how we really treat 3 dots. Providing 5.5.15-1 gives substantially different results than providing 5.5.15.1 which is not intuitive. See comment above regarding Derby's versioning. Need to discuss any enhancements with Maven project to ensure we remain compatible. Joe
Re: Repository version precedence
David, I understand your point about potential confusion if we extend the maven capabilities. However, I have to wonder how many of our users are familiar with maven and if this is important to them. If we are to stay closely aligned with Maven, then I agree with you that need to pursue some of these items with maven. It could be that we are using maven in a context other than it's original intent and therefore we are hitting some usability issues that they normally not consider important. I like your idea of a special qualifier that is considered more recent (such as PRIVATE). Is our current logic in Version.java completely consistent with maven today? I might not be looking in the right place, but I haven't seen maven document ion stating that a version with 3 dots or more would be treated as a qualifier alone (basically assuming a 0.0.0 release). I also didn't see any mention of the special case treatment of a buildnumber starting with "-0" to be considered a qualifier rather than a build number (there was a reference to appending a -0 to a version for comparison purposes if a match was not found and no qualifier was specified). I'm basing most of my maven understanding on this description: http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Dependency+Mediation+and+Conflict+Resolution Joe David Jencks wrote: On May 30, 2006, at 10:49 AM, Joe Bohn wrote: Am I the only one concerned about this? I think this is an important issue for our users. They won't have the luxury to wait for a completely new Geronimo image to fix a problem with an embedded component. They will also face these issues with their own versioned application modules. I would appreciate your input. Thanks, Joe Overall I think we need to keep consistent with maven on this. Having slightly different rules for geronimo compared to maven will create more confusion that any advantage we might gain. There's also some desire to actually use the maven classes to work with repositories and artifacts, which would make it even more likely that we follow maven conventions. I certainly think that we need very clear documentation on what the version numbers mean. I think we might be able to work with maven to come up with some additional possibilities. I think that our basic use case that maven may not support too well is producing a private build of an artifact that is already released from an outside project. Currently the only ways to do this are by incrementing a build number (which can conflict with an official later release) or by incrementing the incremental version and including a qualifier: so 5.5.15 gets replaced by 5.5.16-MyPrivateBuild which will in turn be replaced by any official 5.5.16 release from the project. I'm not sure what problems this last might cause. Perhaps we could lobby maven for a special qualifier keyword that is after all build numbers? e.g. 5.5.15-PRIVATE-23455 A couple more comments inlne thanks david jencks Joe Bohn wrote: I'm trying to get my head around the way that we make a version selection when multiple versions of a package are available.This will be important as users need to include different versions of packages beyond what geronimo bundles or if they need to override a package with a local version. I was working with the tomcat jars and so I was looking for ways to drop in a modified version of the jars and have them picked up without removing the 5.5.15 versions. Here are the items that I tried and which was chosen when compared to 5.5.15 1) 5.5.15.1 - Apparently any version with more than 2 dots is considered invalid and so the entire version is considered to be a qualifier (with a null for the major, minor incrementalVersion, and build - basically treated as 0.0.0-"5.5.15.1"). Any valid version is considered newer. - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15.1 - 5.5.10 is chosen over 5.5.15.1 I'm not sure more dots are a good thing. 2) 5.5.15-1 - The "-" is used to specify a qualifier or buildnumber. Since the value after the dash was numeric, it was considered to be a buildnumber. It appears that a build number is always considered newer than a package without a buildnumber. - 5.5.15-1 is chosen over 5.5.15 3) 5.5.15-01 - The code (Version.java) treats the leading "0" as a special case. This makes the last part a qualifier rather than a build number. Any qualified version is considered to be lower than a non-qualified version (such as with -SNAPSHOT). Anybody know why this special check for "0" is in there? - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15-01 4) 5.5.15-alpha - If the portion following the "-" starts with an alphabetic character then this last portion is considered a qualifier. Once again, the qualified release is considered older than the same version non-qualified. - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15-alpha First, we need to document this behavior very clearly fo
Re: Repository version precedence
On May 30, 2006, at 10:49 AM, Joe Bohn wrote: Am I the only one concerned about this? I think this is an important issue for our users. They won't have the luxury to wait for a completely new Geronimo image to fix a problem with an embedded component. They will also face these issues with their own versioned application modules. I would appreciate your input. Thanks, Joe Overall I think we need to keep consistent with maven on this. Having slightly different rules for geronimo compared to maven will create more confusion that any advantage we might gain. There's also some desire to actually use the maven classes to work with repositories and artifacts, which would make it even more likely that we follow maven conventions. I certainly think that we need very clear documentation on what the version numbers mean. I think we might be able to work with maven to come up with some additional possibilities. I think that our basic use case that maven may not support too well is producing a private build of an artifact that is already released from an outside project. Currently the only ways to do this are by incrementing a build number (which can conflict with an official later release) or by incrementing the incremental version and including a qualifier: so 5.5.15 gets replaced by 5.5.16-MyPrivateBuild which will in turn be replaced by any official 5.5.16 release from the project. I'm not sure what problems this last might cause. Perhaps we could lobby maven for a special qualifier keyword that is after all build numbers? e.g. 5.5.15-PRIVATE-23455 A couple more comments inlne thanks david jencks Joe Bohn wrote: I'm trying to get my head around the way that we make a version selection when multiple versions of a package are available. This will be important as users need to include different versions of packages beyond what geronimo bundles or if they need to override a package with a local version. I was working with the tomcat jars and so I was looking for ways to drop in a modified version of the jars and have them picked up without removing the 5.5.15 versions. Here are the items that I tried and which was chosen when compared to 5.5.15 1) 5.5.15.1 - Apparently any version with more than 2 dots is considered invalid and so the entire version is considered to be a qualifier (with a null for the major, minor incrementalVersion, and build - basically treated as 0.0.0-"5.5.15.1"). Any valid version is considered newer. - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15.1 - 5.5.10 is chosen over 5.5.15.1 I'm not sure more dots are a good thing. 2) 5.5.15-1 - The "-" is used to specify a qualifier or buildnumber. Since the value after the dash was numeric, it was considered to be a buildnumber. It appears that a build number is always considered newer than a package without a buildnumber. - 5.5.15-1 is chosen over 5.5.15 3) 5.5.15-01 - The code (Version.java) treats the leading "0" as a special case. This makes the last part a qualifier rather than a build number. Any qualified version is considered to be lower than a non-qualified version (such as with -SNAPSHOT). Anybody know why this special check for "0" is in there? - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15-01 4) 5.5.15-alpha - If the portion following the "-" starts with an alphabetic character then this last portion is considered a qualifier. Once again, the qualified release is considered older than the same version non-qualified. - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15-alpha First, we need to document this behavior very clearly for users that need to replace packages we ship (or their own packages included in the repo). Second, I would like to propose some changes: - IMO a qualified release should generally be considered *newer* than a non-qualified release. I think SNAPSHOT would be the only exception. Right now we treat that exception as the rule for all qualifiers. I think we should add specific code for "SNAPSHOT" and have all other qualified releases take precedence over a non- qualified release. I can imagine users wanting to add myjar-1.1- patch1.jar to replace myjar-1.1.jar. A lot of people use -DEV which is definitely before a plain build number. I don't think moving most qualifiers to after build numbers will fly: I think a special keyword for this might. - I think we should treat a third "." to be the logical equivalent of a "-" in the version. Most users would expect 5.5.15.1 to be major version 5, minor version 5, incremental version 15, build/rev/patch/whatever 1 and consider this to be newer than 5.5.15. See #1 above for how we really treat 3 dots. Providing 5.5.15-1 gives substantially different results than providing 5.5.15.1 which is not intuitive. I don't think these definitely need to have the same meaning. I think that allowing 3 dots means we should allow any number of dots and I'm no
Re: Repository version precedence
Am I the only one concerned about this? I think this is an important issue for our users. They won't have the luxury to wait for a completely new Geronimo image to fix a problem with an embedded component. They will also face these issues with their own versioned application modules. I would appreciate your input. Thanks, Joe Joe Bohn wrote: I'm trying to get my head around the way that we make a version selection when multiple versions of a package are available. This will be important as users need to include different versions of packages beyond what geronimo bundles or if they need to override a package with a local version. I was working with the tomcat jars and so I was looking for ways to drop in a modified version of the jars and have them picked up without removing the 5.5.15 versions. Here are the items that I tried and which was chosen when compared to 5.5.15 1) 5.5.15.1 - Apparently any version with more than 2 dots is considered invalid and so the entire version is considered to be a qualifier (with a null for the major, minor incrementalVersion, and build - basically treated as 0.0.0-"5.5.15.1"). Any valid version is considered newer. - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15.1 - 5.5.10 is chosen over 5.5.15.1 2) 5.5.15-1 - The "-" is used to specify a qualifier or buildnumber. Since the value after the dash was numeric, it was considered to be a buildnumber. It appears that a build number is always considered newer than a package without a buildnumber. - 5.5.15-1 is chosen over 5.5.15 3) 5.5.15-01 - The code (Version.java) treats the leading "0" as a special case. This makes the last part a qualifier rather than a build number. Any qualified version is considered to be lower than a non-qualified version (such as with -SNAPSHOT). Anybody know why this special check for "0" is in there? - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15-01 4) 5.5.15-alpha - If the portion following the "-" starts with an alphabetic character then this last portion is considered a qualifier. Once again, the qualified release is considered older than the same version non-qualified. - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15-alpha First, we need to document this behavior very clearly for users that need to replace packages we ship (or their own packages included in the repo). Second, I would like to propose some changes: - IMO a qualified release should generally be considered *newer* than a non-qualified release. I think SNAPSHOT would be the only exception. Right now we treat that exception as the rule for all qualifiers. I think we should add specific code for "SNAPSHOT" and have all other qualified releases take precedence over a non-qualified release. I can imagine users wanting to add myjar-1.1-patch1.jar to replace myjar-1.1.jar. - I think we should treat a third "." to be the logical equivalent of a "-" in the version. Most users would expect 5.5.15.1 to be major version 5, minor version 5, incremental version 15, build/rev/patch/whatever 1 and consider this to be newer than 5.5.15. See #1 above for how we really treat 3 dots. Providing 5.5.15-1 gives substantially different results than providing 5.5.15.1 which is not intuitive. Joe -- Joe Bohn joe.bohn at earthlink.net "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose." -- Jim Elliot
Repository version precedence
I'm trying to get my head around the way that we make a version selection when multiple versions of a package are available. This will be important as users need to include different versions of packages beyond what geronimo bundles or if they need to override a package with a local version. I was working with the tomcat jars and so I was looking for ways to drop in a modified version of the jars and have them picked up without removing the 5.5.15 versions. Here are the items that I tried and which was chosen when compared to 5.5.15 1) 5.5.15.1 - Apparently any version with more than 2 dots is considered invalid and so the entire version is considered to be a qualifier (with a null for the major, minor incrementalVersion, and build - basically treated as 0.0.0-"5.5.15.1"). Any valid version is considered newer. - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15.1 - 5.5.10 is chosen over 5.5.15.1 2) 5.5.15-1 - The "-" is used to specify a qualifier or buildnumber. Since the value after the dash was numeric, it was considered to be a buildnumber. It appears that a build number is always considered newer than a package without a buildnumber. - 5.5.15-1 is chosen over 5.5.15 3) 5.5.15-01 - The code (Version.java) treats the leading "0" as a special case. This makes the last part a qualifier rather than a build number. Any qualified version is considered to be lower than a non-qualified version (such as with -SNAPSHOT). Anybody know why this special check for "0" is in there? - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15-01 4) 5.5.15-alpha - If the portion following the "-" starts with an alphabetic character then this last portion is considered a qualifier. Once again, the qualified release is considered older than the same version non-qualified. - 5.5.15 is chosen over 5.5.15-alpha First, we need to document this behavior very clearly for users that need to replace packages we ship (or their own packages included in the repo). Second, I would like to propose some changes: - IMO a qualified release should generally be considered *newer* than a non-qualified release. I think SNAPSHOT would be the only exception. Right now we treat that exception as the rule for all qualifiers. I think we should add specific code for "SNAPSHOT" and have all other qualified releases take precedence over a non-qualified release. I can imagine users wanting to add myjar-1.1-patch1.jar to replace myjar-1.1.jar. - I think we should treat a third "." to be the logical equivalent of a "-" in the version. Most users would expect 5.5.15.1 to be major version 5, minor version 5, incremental version 15, build/rev/patch/whatever 1 and consider this to be newer than 5.5.15. See #1 above for how we really treat 3 dots. Providing 5.5.15-1 gives substantially different results than providing 5.5.15.1 which is not intuitive. Joe -- Joe Bohn joe.bohn at earthlink.net "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose." -- Jim Elliot
