Re: FTP Installation & Package Naming Conventions

[Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>]

brian white writes ("Re: FTP Installation & Package Naming Conventions "):
> >brian white writes ("Re: FTP Installation & Package Naming Conventions "):
> >> Also, while the versions are not choosen by Debian, the format in which
> >> they are written could be.  It really makes little difference whether it
> >> is called "bison-A2.5-0.deb" or "bison-2.5A-0.deb".
> >
> >The sorting implications are very different, and this is important
> >because dpkg and dselect can be reluctant to downgrade packages.
> 
> Ah, so these version num...er...strings are lexigraphically ordered?  I never
> saw that documented anywhere.

That's because there's not much dpkg documentation.  I've had a draft
manual from Juho A Vuori <javuori@cc.helsinki.fi>, who hasn't
responded yet to the comments I sent him.

I don't recall that that manual documented the ordering convention for
version numbers.

If you would like to write a manpage fragment (examine the dpkg source
code to see what it does), please do so - send it both to Juho and to
me.

Thanks,
Ian.