Bug#248618: Section 3.2.1 encourages use of epochs
On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 12:21:40PM +0200, Bill Allombert wrote:
> 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:
> > > 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.
I disagree. Epoch is meant to be a version-compare override, and isn't
supposed to be very user-visible. Therefore, you should take care not to
re-use a version number, even with a different epoch. '3.5-1' means the
first Debian upload of the 3.5 version of a package, and 1:3.5-1 means
the same (but for any reason, a epoch is in use). If you're backporting
to 3.5, you should still take 1:3.5-2 then, since it's your second
upload of a 3.5 version.
Besides, your logic is a bit flawed, 'current practice' refers to
packaging choices of maintainers, not to bugs/features in some package
used for building .deb's. Working around that bug/feature would be
'current' practice, but isn't (though it happens occasionally).
--Jeroen
--
Jeroen van Wolffelaar
Jeroen@wolffelaar.nl (also for Jabber & MSN; ICQ: 33944357)
http://Jeroen.A-Eskwadraat.nl
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