Re: 2008Q1 -> current: downgrade

[Alan Barrett <apb%cequrux.com@localhost>]

On Wed, 21 May 2008, Alistair Crooks wrote:
> I wanted to know when we'd use epoch, and have only had hand-waving
> answers.

This thread stared with a concrete example of a package for which a
newer version of the package had a version number that was smaller
than the version number for an older version of the package.  (I am
distinguishing "versions" from "version numbers" here.)  This problem is
not hypothetical, as you imply by using the term "hand waving".

As for "when we'd use epoch", I really thought that this had been
answered, or was obvious from the definition of what epoch would mean:
We'd start with epoch=0 for all packages, and people who don't read
source code or detailed documentation for the pkgsrc infrastructure
wouldn't even notice.  We'd increment epoch for packages that need it,
whenever the upstream does something stupid to the numbering scheme,
which will be very seldom.  Packages with epoch != 0 will end up with
something ugly somewhere in the version number.

> I don't feel it's prudent to do this to every package for just a small
> number of packages over the last 10 years which can be worked around.

Yes, there have been only a small number of such problems.  I don't know
how hard it is for others to work around the problems, but I dislike
having to do it by hand, and I don't have an automated way of doing it.

I don't understand your point about doing this to every package.
Most packages won't change at all.  If we had had a scheme like this
throughout the last 10 years, then only a small number of packages would
have been affected during that time.

--apb (Alan Barrett)