Re: Understanding versioning.

[Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com>]

On Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:38:32 +0700, Sthu Deus wrote:

> When I see this aptitude note:
> 
> [UPGRADE] libavcodec52 5:0.6.1+svn20101128-0.2squeeze2 -> 5:0.7.7-0.0
> 
> how do I interpret number "5:" in "5:0.6.1"?

***
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html

5.6.12 Version

The version number of a package. The format is: [epoch:]upstream_version[-
debian_revision]

The three components here are:

epoch

This is a single (generally small) unsigned integer. It may be omitted, 
in which case zero is assumed. If it is omitted then the upstream_version 
may not contain any colons.

It is provided to allow mistakes in the version numbers of older versions 
of a package, and also a package's previous version numbering schemes, to 
be left behind.
***

HTH :-)

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón