Re: Debian part of a version number when epoch is bumped

["Christian T. Steigies" <cts@debian.org>]

Moin,
On Fri, Mar 30, 2018 at 02:21:43PM +0300, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> 
> There are two problems here.
> 
> The first is the use of an epoch in a situation where it shouldn't be used.
> 
> The actual "trap" is when a maintainer used an epoch in such a situation.
> 
> Once introduced in a package an epoch cannot ever be undone, so all that 
> can be done on that is to make it clearer that it is wrong to use an 
> epoch in such cases.

I don't understand why everybody is so afraid of an epoch, but ok.

> The second problem is about filename overlap after incorrect epoch usage.

So the epoch is not really part of the version number, it is just there for
"sorting"?

> It is important to understand that this is only relevant for cases where 
> an epoch was used where it shouldn't have been:
> When an epoch is used as intended for a change in the upstream version 
> numbering scheme (e.g. from 20171224 to 1.0), there is no overlap in
> version numbers.
> 
> Launchpad gave an error on that, and this is better than the silent 
> breakage in Debian of the assumption that no filename is ever used twice 
> in Debian. I would consider it a bug in dak that it doesn't know about 
> all versions and filenames that ever existed in Debian.

ok
 
> It would be wrong to document in Debian policy that skipping Debian 
> revisions is required in such cases, since the only case where this
> second problem can happen is when a maintainer used an epoch in a
> situation where it shouldn't be used (first problem).[1]
> 
> For the future it should be documented better that using an epoch is 
> wrong in such cases, but for past incorrect epoch usage all that can
> be done is to limit the damage.

If this can't go into policy, then I hope it will go into the wiki or a
packaging best-practices or so.
 
> Things that cannot be undone for moon-buggy:
> - the epoch
> - two files moon-buggy_1.0.51-1.dsc exist in Debian,
>   with different contents [2]
> 
> What can be done for moon-buggy is to use a Debian revision that doesn't
> result in filenames that are duplicates with pre-epoch packages.

So what should I have done intially and what should I do now?

I should have uploaded the package as 1.0.51-12 even though I uploaded a
(new) orig.tar.gz?

Now I should upload it as 1:1.0.51-12 and be done with it?

No renaming of the orig.tar to 1.0.51+really1.0.51 neccessary?

thanks,
Christian