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

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org> writes:

> 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

For me, the first block is much clearer than the second block, since it
makes it more obvious that those are dates.  With the second, I have a lot
more confusion over whether those are actually minor and patch release
versions.  I don't have a lot of trouble sorting them in my head.

I realize that people vary, and the fact that I don't have trouble doesn't
mean other people won't.  But personally I prefer Joey's way of writing
those version numbers.

(Obviously, dashes would be even better than either periods or nothing,
but sadly that adds a bunch of additional complexity.)

Now, the one thing I'd add there is that I *do* use periods as you
describe for packages where the version is *only* a date.  The confusion
that I see only happens when you're adding a version and a date, since
then my brain sees four parts and really struggles with parsing it as a
date.

Plus sort of helps a little, but 9+2011.12.11 still looks rather confusing
to me.  I expect that version to indicate a Git snapshot of development
following a version 9 release.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>