Re: Starting unstable aptitude releases and RFC

[Neal H Walfield <neal@cs.uml.edu>]

>   One question that I'd like people to comment on: I'd like to release a
> precompiled binary package for this version, but I don't think releasing it as
> "aptitude" is a good idea :)
>   Would it work if I ITPed "aptitude1" and uploaded that package [1]?  The only
> thing that really worries me is that I'll eventually want to remove this
> package and release it as "aptitude" (once the new version is working well),
> and people who only install aptitude1 will be cut out of upgrades once that
> package is removed and not know what's going on.  That sounds like a nasty
> situation to me, unless I make aptitude1 artifically depend on aptitude (EVIL!)

Why not call it aptitude-beta.  Then when you release .1, the
aptitude-beta package moves to aptitude and you begin development on .2
which you also call aptitude-beta (for packaging purposes).

Here is some C code which makes this clear ;)

#include <debian/dpkg.h>
#include <programs.h>

extern program aptitude_0;
extern program aptitude_1;
extern program aptitude_2;

int main (int argc, char *argc)
{
  package* aptitude = debify (aptitude_0);
  package* aptitude_beta = debify (aptitude_1);

  await (is_released (aptitude_2));

  lock_packages ();

  package_free (aptitide_0);
  aptitude = aptitude_beta;
  aptitude_beta = debify (aptitude_2);

  unlock_packages ();

  return 0;
}

-Neal

-- 
Neal H Walfield
University of Massachusetts at Lowell
neal@walfield.org or neal@cs.uml.edu