Bug#248618: Section 3.2.1 encourages use of epochs
On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 11:48:16AM +0200, Jeroen van Wolffelaar wrote:
> 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...
I didn't made such claims, just pointing out some facts that are
relevant to the case at end.
Beside this bug is reported to debian-policy which is supposed to
document current practice and the current practice is that epoch
exhibits the above mentionned behaviour.
Cheers,
--
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>
Imagine a large red swirl here.
Reply to: