Epoch usage note

[Guy Maor <maor@ece.utexas.edu>]

How annoying.  Michael D. gets epochs working and all the users
naively assume the colons are typos.  Apparently old versions of dpkg
have BIG problems handling them.

dpkg 1.4.0.7 will find its way into stable and unstable by tomorrow.
It corrects the --assert-support-predepends bug and adds a new option:
--assert-working-epoch.

If you use an epoch in your version number, I suggest checking for
working epoch support in the preinst with something like this:

set -e
dpkg --assert-working-epoch 2>&- || {
    echo -e "\nYou must upgrade dpkg before installing this package.\n"
    false
}

As a reminder, I will file bugs against all packages currently using
epochs.


Guy


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