Package versioning of software beta/pre versions

[jerome.marant@free.fr (Jérôme Marant)]

Hi,

  I sometimes build Debian packages of preversions or beta versions
  of some packages I do maintain for testing purposes only.
  And I'd like to use a package versioning that allows:
  - Smooth upgrade to the stable release of the packages
  - reflecting the beta/pre status of the packages in the version
    of the .orig tarball.

  Example with icewm-1.0.9-pre2 (upstream versioning)

  Until now, I've been using:

  - 1.0.9 as the .orig tarball version
  - 0pre2.1 as the Debian revision.

  It works fine but I'm not happy with this since the .orig tarball
  dos not contain the 'pre' status.

  I tried 1.0.9-0pre2 as the upstream version but it doesn't work.
  dpkg --compare-versions "1.0.9-0pre2-1" lt "1.0.9-1" is false
  which is a normal behaviour.

  Has anyone a better idea?

  Thanks.

-- 
Jérôme Marant <jerome@marant.org>
              <jerome.marant@free.fr>

HTTP://marant.org