Re: libqwt-dev: apt reinstalls the package

[Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>]

Hi,

On Fri, 16 Dec 2011, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> > If we have a close look, we can see that:
> > Online is:
> > Replaces: libqwt5-qt4-dev (<< 6.0.0-)
> > After installation we have in dpkg/status:
> > Replaces: libqwt5-qt4-dev (<< 6.0.0)
> 
> From policy §7.1:
> 
> 	parentheses should contain a relation from the list below
> 	followed by a version number, in the format described in
> 	Version, Section 5.6.12.
> 
> "6.0.0-" is not a valid version number.

It's accepted by dpkg at least. Why would it be invalid?

$ dpkg --compare-versions 6.0.0- eq 6.0.0 && echo yes
yes

It doesn't bring anything useful though and is best avoided. This was
already reported once and I have even code (in my private branch
pu/keep-version-string) that ensures that dpkg preserves the trailing
dash. dpkg-dev already does that correctly. I think Guillem was not really
convinced by the need to fix this on the dpkg side.

(A similar problem happens if you write your version with an explicit
epoch of "0", aka "0:6.0.0" == "6.0.0" but the string is different)

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

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