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Bug#620566: dpkg: "version number does not start with digit" is in contrast to policy



* Julien Cristau [Son Apr 03, 2011 at 10:16:47 +0200]:
> On Sun, Apr  3, 2011 at 05:03:47 +0200, Guillem Jover wrote:
> > On Sat, 2011-04-02 at 21:28:08 +0200, Christian Hofstaedtler wrote:

> > > dpkg 1.16.0 appears to refuse to install packages which have a Version:
> > > field which does not start with a digit.

> > This is in line with the recent changes to properly parse and validate
> > the data dpkg has to handle.

> > > The Debian policy currently states:
> > > The upstream_version may contain only alphanumerics[33] and the
> > > characters . + - : ~ (full stop, plus, hyphen, colon, tilde) and *should*
> > > start with a digit.

> > > I don't see why this would forbid versions starting with an
> > > anlphanumeric character.

> > Well, while I generally agree dpkg does not need to be as strict as
> > policy when it might make sense to be laxer outside Debian, in this
> > case I don't see the point in allowing the version to start with an
> > alphabetic character. This is an interface other software rely on,
> > and expect it to be as specified, so making sure dpkg validates and
> > disallows bogus values seems the correct thing to do.

> I don't see the point in disallowing these versions in dpkg, they won't
> cause any problem anywhere, they're just discouraged by policy...  Maybe
> we want dak to forbid them, but that's a different thing.

Yeah, actually the change is breaking existing packages which used
to work just fine (disclaimer: no, the ones I'm talking about aren't
available in the official Debian pool).

I understand the change but a timeframe for upgrading would be nice
with warnings instead of erroring out.

regards,
-mika-

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