Re: Packages with versions but no releases

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

Brook Milligan <brook%nmsu.edu@localhost> writes:

> I am making a package for software (rnaturalearthhires) that has
> version numbers but does not have any releases.  The only source seems
> to be a zip file with no version embedded in the name and the the
> project GitHub page lists 0 releases.
>
> My question is what to use as the pkgsrc version.  Options I see are:
>
> - Use the internal version.  This would seem to track what upstream is doing, but I am not sure what that number means relative to code updates and changes in the zip file.
>
> - Use my download date.  This seems to be the pattern for other
> unversioned packages and will readily differentiate different copies
> of the zip file.  However, if upstream starts doing proper releases,
> we have the problem of which is earlier, a date or a version?

Do they have tags?  Apparently not.


File a bug with upstream that they have no releases, and ask about how
to manage this.  Don't expect them to change, but it's likely you'll get
some useful comments, and perhaps help them understand that releases are
actually an important thing in software engineering.

Packages need to have a download link that returns invariant data.   So
some sort of "tip of master" zipfile is not ok in pkgsrc.

I would suggest that you pick an internal version, and retrieve it by
sha1, basically declaring that then they change the version number, that
commit is what should have been the release.

If you feel the need to take versions that are beyond the latest version
bump, file another bug, and then choose a version that is

0.2.0.0.N

where N is the number of commits since the 0.2.0 commit.


But this doesn't look like it is changing a lot.