Re: Versioning unversioned packages

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

Yeah, FreeBSD have an 'epoch' setting, too, but it doesn't make it
right - both of them look butt ugly, and they both use different
syntax :(.

We did talk about this a few years ago, and I disliked the thing then.
Unfortunately, time hasn't mellowed me in this regard - I don't see
that there's a use for it, and we've managed to come 19 years without
having it up until now, and the wiz/schmonz approach seems to work
fine, so I'd be against any "epoch" addition.

Regards,
Alistair

On 10 June 2016 at 14:45, Taylor R Campbell
<campbell+netbsd-tech-pkg%mumble.net@localhost> wrote:
>    Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2016 13:13:07 +0100
>    From: Gavan Fantom <gavan%coolfactor.org@localhost>
>
>       - What do we then do if upstream makes a formal release? How will
>    version comparisons be affected if we switch from this format to
>    pkgname-1.0?
>
> In Debian, there is an additional optional component to each version
> number which is called an `epoch', and represents a version for the
> package's version numbering scheme.  E.g., if you first went with
> prerelease dates, you might use
>
> foo-20160610
> foo-20160613
> ...
>
> Then when upstream makes a real release, say 0.1, you set the epoch to
> 1 by a prefix of `1!':
>
> foo-1!0.1
> foo-1!0.2
> foo-1!1.0
> foo-1!1.2
> foo-1!1.3
> ...
>
> These versions are all considered newer than those with no epoch,
> interpreted as epoch 0.  Then, when upstream decides that they really
> wanted a longer version number and they release what would have been
> 1.4 as 0.1.4 instead, you can increment the epoch:
>
> foo-2!0.1.4
>
> And so on.
>
> Maybe we should adopt something like that?
>