Bug#382612: please document ~ as allowable character in version numbers
retitle 382612 [PROPOSAL] Document ~ behavior in version numbers
thanks
Here is a proposed patch to Policy to document the use of ~ in version
numbers. Please review, and if it looks accurate, please second.
--- policy.sgml.orig 2006-06-19 22:20:13.000000000 -0700
+++ policy.sgml 2006-09-08 13:09:35.000000000 -0700
@@ -2649,8 +2649,8 @@
Alphanumerics are <tt>A-Za-z0-9</tt> only.
</footnote>
and the characters <tt>.</tt> <tt>+</tt> <tt>-</tt>
- <tt>:</tt> (full stop, plus, hyphen, colon) and should
- start with a digit. If there is no
+ <tt>:</tt> <tt>~</tt> (full stop, plus, hyphen, colon,
+ tilde) and should start with a digit. If there is no
<var>debian_revision</var> then hyphens are not allowed;
if there is no <var>epoch</var> then colons are not
allowed.
@@ -2663,8 +2663,8 @@
This part of the version number specifies the version of
the Debian package based on the upstream version. It
may contain only alphanumerics and the characters
- <tt>+</tt> and <tt>.</tt> (plus and full stop) and is
- compared in the same way as the
+ <tt>+</tt> <tt>.</tt> <tt>~</tt> (plus, full stop,
+ tilde) and is compared in the same way as the
<var>upstream_version</var> is.
</p>
@@ -2713,7 +2713,10 @@
which may be empty) are compared lexically. If a difference
is found it is returned. The lexical comparison is a
comparison of ASCII values modified so that all the letters
- sort earlier than all the non-letters.
+ sort earlier than all the non-letters and so that a tilde
+ sorts before anything, even the end of a part. For example,
+ the following parts are in sorted order: <tt>~~<tt>,
+ <tt>~~a</tt>, <tt>~</tt>, the empty part, <tt>a</tt>.
</p>
<p>
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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