Bug#792853: debian-policy: please disallow colons in upstream_version
Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org> writes:
> So, in principle 2) and 3) are mostly problems in dpkg, 1) might be a
> quite good indication that upstreams do not usually do this, and 4) a
> very strong deterrent for them to do so.
> I'm ambivalent on disallowing this in Debian, and even if policy ends
> up disallowing it might still make sense to allow it in dpkg in case
> someone outside Debian is using such thing (although I'm having a bit
> of a hard time seeing this being used in practice).
I feel like simplicity in our version numbering scheme is best. It's
clear that no one is currently using this, and this message is the first
time I recall it even coming up. That implies that we're not losing much
(if anything) by not supporting this, even though we claimed it was
supported.
The simplest approach for Debian seems to be to just forbid colons in
upstream version numbers. This also simplifies parsing mildly.
(Obviously, dpkg is free to be more generous, although it's convenient
when dpkg aligns with Debian Policy in a way that doesn't require writing
a separate Lintian rule.)
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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