Re: Bug#971023: Version field (5.6.12) and colons

[Christian Kastner <ckk@debian.org>]

Hi Sean,

On 2020-09-29 02:22, Sean Whitton wrote:
> Technically superfluous but I think helpful to the reader, so I suggest
> we just keep it.

To be honest, as a reader, I found that to be the opposite. The "If
[epoch] is omitted" makes it sound as if there were an alternative
handling if it's not omitted.

So the text

 If it is omitted then the upstream_version may not contain any colons

actually means

 The upstream_version may not contain any colons


It gets slightly more confusing when one considers dashes:
upstream_revision may have a dash if a revision exists.

But upstream_revision may not have a colon regardless of whether an
epoch is present or not; so the "If [epoch] is omitted" seems really odd.

Anyway, just my thoughts. Perhaps I read too much into it.