Re: Apt pinning.

["Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net>]

Hi,

The Wanderer wrote:
> an epoch as high as 9:
> ii  wodim
> 9:1.1.11-3.2

Looks like interesting history.

  https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/c/cdrkit/changelog-91.1.11-3.2
(when read backwards) shows repeated occasions of what
  https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#epochs-should-be-used-sparingly
describes as:
  "Note that the purpose of epochs is [...] to allow us to leave behind
   serious mistakes."

It began in the old cdrecord days obviously to override the peculiar
upstream version numbering of cdrecord pre-releases:

    -- Christian Schwarz <schwarz@debian.org>  Tue, 16 Sep 1997 22:16:57 +0200
  cdrecord (1.5a5-1) experimental; urgency=low
     ...
    -- Christian Schwarz <schwarz@debian.org>  Sun, 12 Oct 1997 21:59:11 +0200
  cdrecord (1:1.5-1) unstable; urgency=low
     ...
     * Included epoch in version number.
     ...

There might have been the intention to stay with a version format where
chronological sequence and dpkg sorting are in sync. But then a new
package maintainer took over and the letters got re-introduced.
This became a sorting problem later:

    -- Erik Andersen <andersee@debian.org>  Sat, 22 Jan 2000 12:40:27 -0700
  cdrecord (1:1.8a40r3-1) frozen unstable; urgency=low
    ...
    -- Erik Andersen <andersee@debian.org>  Mon, 21 Feb 2000 22:29:39 -0700
  cdrecord (2:1.8a40-1) frozen unstable; urgency=low
    ...
    -- Erik Andersen <andersee@debian.org>  Tue, 29 Feb 2000 10:02:15 -0700
  cdrecord (3:1.8-1) frozen unstable; urgency=low
    ...
   -- Erik Andersen <andersee@debian.org>  Sat, 29 Sep 2001 15:41:11 -0600
 cdrtools (4:1.10-1) unstable; urgency=low

For a while, the pre-release suffixes were avoided and the "source" version
staid with the youngest release.
When they came back, a "+" was inserted between the minor version number of
the youngest released version and the current pre-release version:

   -- Eduard Bloch <blade@debian.org>  Fri,  6 Sep 2002 20:09:15 +0200
  cdrtools (4:1.10+11a31-1) unstable; urgency=low

The lower sorting rank of '+' in comparison to '-' solved the problem with
the pre-release suffixes.

Then came the big fork of cdrtools into cdrkit with new version numbers
(and an even better separator for "pre1"):

   -- Eduard Bloch <blade@debian.org>  Mon,  4 Sep 2006 01:24:22 +0200
  cdrkit (5:1.0~pre1-1) unstable; urgency=low

This could have been the epoch to be used up to today. But then Knoppix
was caught with having installed a cdrecord package with epoch 8.
  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=399995#32

So the current epoch became 9.

   -- Eduard Bloch <blade@debian.org>  Sat, 30 Dec 2006 16:45:31 +0100
  cdrkit (9:1.1.0-1) unstable; urgency=low


The Wanderer wrote:
> I don't see any of 10 or above.

None to be expected from cdrkit. The lack of further substantial
development quite surely ended this dramedy.
(I doubt that its final maintainer would be willing to change its
epoch just to please people who installed a non-Debian package of it.)


Have a nice day :)

Thomas