Bug#248618: Section 3.2.1 encourages use of epochs
On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 09:19:25AM +0200, Bill Allombert wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 12:39:25AM +0200, Jeroen van Wolffelaar wrote:
> > On Wed, May 12, 2004 at 03:54:46PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
> > > On Wed, May 12, 2004 at 03:39:59PM +0200, Jeroen van Wolffelaar wrote:
> > > > What if you upload a new upstream, but it is too broken yet, and you
> > > > want to downgrade in Debian? You need an epoch. Or if you simply make a
> > > > mistake? Or a NMU uploads a new upstream version, or a broken version,
> > > > by mistake? It happens.
> > >
> > > I would make it "newversion+oldversion". Similar things are done for alpha
> > > or prealpha packages, e.g. "1.2+1.3pre3".
> > >
> > > > One only should take care to not choose a version system that will
> > > > require an epoch increase every time.
> > >
> > > Well, if we can avoid it without any payload, why not do it?
> >
> > The payload is obfuscated, hacked version numbers, newversion+oldversion
> > is very confusing, especially if the package isn't at all in
> > 'newversion'. You sure must admit that 'newversion+oldversion' is a hack
> > around the version compare function...
> >
> > Epoch is the solution for that.
>
> Epoch suffers from the nasty bug of not being written in the package
> name. For example the file name of the .deb for gcc 4:3.3.3-3 is
> gcc_3.3.3-3_i386.deb
>
> This can be very confusing, especially when used for downgrading the
> upstrream version. At worse you will end up with two packages with the
> same name, which is not allowed.
>
> So using newversion+oldversion is more reliable and cause less trouble.
So because of some bug/feature (I'm not yet sure which one it is),
rather than having the bug fixed, you want to abolish the feature called
'epoch'? Interesting...
Regarding the filename, if you downgrade, simply continue the debian
revision with one higher than previously... that's more clear. (But this
is offtopic for this very bugreport, so if you want to react to this,
let's move to an appropriate bugreport).
--Jeroen
--
Jeroen van Wolffelaar
Jeroen@wolffelaar.nl (also for Jabber & MSN; ICQ: 33944357)
http://Jeroen.A-Eskwadraat.nl
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