On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 02:26:29PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote: > Damyan Ivanov wrote: > > For example Module::Build 0.36 is to be found in Debian as > > libmodule-build-perl 0.360000. The main difference between versions > > found on CPAN and Debian versions is that CPAN ones are compared as > > fractional numbers. Debian versions are compared as a sequence of > > (integer) numbers and non-digit text strings. So for dpkg 0.3401 is > > larger than 0.36 (because 3401 is larger than 36), whereas for CPAN > > the opposite is true. In order to cope with upstream releasing 0.36 > > after 0.3401, we "mangle" the upstream version, forcing the part after > > the dot to be right-padded with zeroes and be at least 4 digits. > > Please don't take this as second guessing anyone's decisions, but that > is a textbook example of why epochs exist and why we should not be > afraid to use them. An epoched version that contains the unmodified > upstream version is much more useful than a mangled upstream version. Part of the problem here is that there are authors publishing quite a lot of modules on CPAN who *consistently* rely on such versioning tricks - or at least have relied on those over many years. This would have meant having a package with an epoch in the double digits... which, besides simply looking weird, also brings its own can of worms. G'luck, Peter -- Peter Pentchev roam@space.bg roam@ringlet.net roam@FreeBSD.org PGP key: http://people.FreeBSD.org/~roam/roam.key.asc Key fingerprint FDBA FD79 C26F 3C51 C95E DF9E ED18 B68D 1619 4553 If there were no counterfactuals, this sentence would not have been paradoxical.
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