Re: PW#5-15: Package versions based on dates

[Steve Greenland <stevegr@master.debian.org>]

On 13-Jan-1998 23:35:47, Mark Baker <mbaker@iee.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 13, 1998 at 11:34:32PM +0100, Christian Schwarz wrote:
> >      To prevent having to use epochs for every new upstream version,
> >      the version number should be changed to the following format in
> >      such cases: `96-05-01', `96-12-24', and starting with the year
> >      2000 `2000-12-24'.
> 
> That will mean we'll need to use epochs for all these starting in 2000.
> Since we're going to need four digit years soon anyway, it would be better
> to use them now.

No, dpkg gets this right -- it compares numerically, not textually, if
it can:

steveg:~>  dpkg --compare-versions 98May07 lt 98Dec07 ; echo $?
1
steveg:~>  dpkg --compare-versions 1 lt 2 ; echo $?
0
steveg:~>  dpkg --compare-versions 98-07-01 lt 98-08-01 ; echo $?
0
steveg:~>  dpkg --compare-versions 98-07-01 lt 20-08-01 ; echo $?
1
steveg:~>  dpkg --compare-versions 98-07-01 lt 2000-08-01 ; echo $?
0


steveg
-- 
Steve Greenland