Re: Versioning unversioned packages

[Alistair Crooks <agc%pkgsrc.org@localhost>]

On 21 June 2016 at 06:12, Marc Espie <espie%nerim.net@localhost> wrote:
> It will probably suffer from NIH syndrom, as usual, but we have a full
> nice set of version suffixes/prefixes in the OpenBSD package system that
> hasn't failed us so far.
>
> Over the years, everything got moved into the pkg tools proper.
>
> It's documented in packages-specs, basically, for upstream, we do
> dot matches (dewey notation) plus the following suffixes:
> rc[N], beta[N], pre[N], pl[N].
>
> beta is oldest (before the release), pre and rc are more or less synonymous
> (and also come before the release), pl comes *after* the release.

Oh, these have already suffered from NIH, don't worry. They were
introduced first in pkgsrc in 2001/2002, way before OpenBSD decided to
do anything like it. I talked about it (amongst other things) at
EuroBSDcon 2002 in Amsterdam. But don't be too hard on yourself, you
missed out the "alpha" suffix when it was copied. Pity.

> Whatever you change in NetBSD, please consider not reinventing something
> different.   We haven't found a need to deviate from that scheme since 2010.

Thanks. The original was introduced to pkgsrc in 2002, we haven't
changed it since then.

> The only slightly annoying part is EPOCH: once set, it can never ever be
> reset... not really such a big bother in real life.

And unneccessary, too. Please keep up.