Re: Bug#155105: Version upgrades in stable

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

/ Adam Di Carlo <adam@onshore-devel.com> was heard to say:
| "John R. Daily" <john@geekhavoc.com> writes:
|
|> The docbook (DocBook DTD) package in woody is a candidate release
|> for 4.2, and as such is less useful and probably more troublesome
|> than the real thing.  I cannot state exactly how troublesome
|> without a working knowledge of catalogs.

I seem to have missed the beginning of this thread, so I'll just
sprinkle in a couple of thoughts and step aside again :-)

| What is the real basis for this claim?  In fact, I would bet the
| docbook 4.2CR2 is very close and almost identical to DocBook 4.2.
| Furthermore, it can be addressed as DocBook 4.2.

Quoting from the spec[1]:

  3.1. Changes in DocBook V4.2

       There are no backwards-incompatible changes in this release.

       Each of the changes made between DocBook V4.2CR3 and DocBook
       V4.2 is summarized here.

       The appellation "CR3" was removed from comments, public, and
       system identifiers.

  3.2. Changes in DocBook V4.2CR3

       There are no backwards-incompatible changes in this release.

       Each of the changes made between DocBook V4.2CR2 and DocBook
       V4.2CR3 is summarized here.

       The only changes made for the CR3 release were in comments in
       the various modules. The previous release, labelled "Candidate
       Release 2", erroneously contained the CR1 files. This release
       fixes that error.

In other words, CR2 is functionally indistinguishable from either CR3
or the 4.2 Committee Specification release.

| Anyhow, since the package, docbook, doesn't have a 4.2 version yet in
| the archive at all, you'll have to wait.  In fact, you should wait
| until it's propogated down to the 'testing' distribution.  Then and
| only then you could try to contact the ftp-masters and ask if they
| would update stable with the proper 4.2 version.

ASAP, please.

| But honestly I'm sure they'll say "no", and I agree with them.  You
| would need to cite an actual problem which happens if someone uses
| 4.2CR2 rather than 4.2.

Well, as long as the relevant catalogs map 4.2 identifiers to 4.2CR2,
I suppose there are no practical problems.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

[1] http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/specs/cs-docbook-docbook-4.2.html

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | "Abstraction, abstraction and
http://nwalsh.com/            | abstraction." This is the answer to the
                              | question, "What are the three most
                              | important words in programming?"--Paul
                              | Hudak