Bug#798714: debian-policy: Please explicitly recommend punctuation between the year, month and day components of date based version numbers

[Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>]

Package: debian-policy
Severity: wishlist
Version: 3.9.6.1

Hi,

§3.2.1 currently reads:
> […] the date-based portion of any upstream version number should be
> given in a way that sorts correctly: four-digit year first, followed
> by a two-digit numeric month, followed by a two-digit numeric date,
> possibly with punctuation between the components.
>
> […] If punctuation is desired between the date components, remember
> that hyphen (-) cannot be used in native package versions. Period (.)
> is normally a good choice.

Unfortunately this led to quite a lot of package with version numbers
less readable than before and hence less easier to compare manually.

Well-known examples include debhelper, ca-certificates and now
unfortunately also lsb-base.

To demonstrate my point, please sort the following version numbers in
your head:

* 20110111.0
* 20101111.1
* 20111111.2
* 9.20111211
* 9.20111121

And now compare the same dates, but written with punctuation:

* 2011.01.11.0
* 2010.11.11.1
* 2011.11.11.2
* 9.2011.12.11
* 9.2011.11.21

So please change the above cited policy section in a way that it is
clear that the "YYYY.MM.DD" format is preferred and the format without
punctuation between the year, month and day components is discouraged.

Here's a suggestion for an updated text:

| […] the date-based portion of any upstream version number should be
| given in a way that sorts correctly: four-digit year first, followed
| by a two-digit numeric month, followed by a two-digit numeric date,
| with punctuation between the components.
|
| […] Since punctuation is desired between the date components, remember
| that hyphen (-) cannot be used in native package versions. Period (.)
| is the recommended choice.

P.S.: Yes, I'm aware that this doesn't help much for existing badly
formatted date-based version numbers, as it would need an epoch to
change it. But since many packages (like e.g. debhelper) use a prefix
number anyway (e.g. 9.20150811), this could be changed when the date
prefix is bumped the next time, e.g. to 10.2015.09.23 or so. And if
someone thinks that makes it less obvious where the date starts, a
different delimiter before the date could be chosen, e.g. 10+2015.09.23.

		Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>, http://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' :  |  Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
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