Re: libcurl2 7.12.0-1 breakage and its removal from unstable

[Wouter Verhelst <wouter@grep.be>]

On Sat, Jun 05, 2004 at 06:09:32PM +0200, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> You can never get rid of an epoch. Epochs are ment to handle the case
> where upstream uses a versioning that does not sort well for dpkg,

They are explicitely *not* meant for that case:

     Note that the purpose of epochs is to allow us to leave behind
     mistakes in version numbering, and to cope with situations where the
     version numbering scheme changes.  It is _not_ intended to cope with
     version numbers containing strings of letters which the package
     management system cannot interpret

Instead, epochs have a good reason:

          It is provided to allow mistakes in the version numbers of older
          versions of a package, and also a package's previous version
          numbering schemes, to be left behind.

> In this case the maintainer screwed up and its a temporary problem. 

Well, so he can use an epoch. That's what it's for -- unless you're
saying that "mistakes" and "screwing up" aren't the same thing.

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