Epoch usage conventions (was Re: R 3.0.0 and required rebuilds of all reverse Depends: of R)
Guillem Jover writes ("Epoch usage conventions (was Re: R 3.0.0 and required rebuilds of all reverse Depends: of R)"):
> Well, I strongly disagree that in general using epochs for packaging
> mistakes is a good practice (and I've thought so even before Ubuntu
> existed). The main purpose of epochs is to be able to handle mistakes
> or changes in the version numbering itself. Say upstream resets their
> versioning from v450 to 0.0.0, or from date based 20130404 to 0.0.0
> (although the packager could have avoided that by prefixing with "0."),
> or if they used something like 1.210 and they meant 1.2.10 (svgalib),
> or a package takes over another's name (git).
I agree entirely with what Guillem says.
> Also, introducing an epoch where there was none in an NMU should be
> frowned upon, unfortunately I've seen multiple instances of these in
> the recent past, something I'd be very upset if it happened to any of
> the packages I maintain.
I wonder if this should be explicitly stated in the dev ref.
Ian.
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