discussion on package-version numbers... (PR 56961)

[Garance A Drosihn]

At 2:07 PM -0500 5/6/04, Jacques A. Vidrine wrote:
>On Sat, Apr 17, 2004 at 10:22:42AM -0500, Jacques A. Vidrine wrote:
>  > I *would* like to see the package versioning rules made more clear
>  > and explicit, and perhaps even see some reform.  However, making
>  > up a new special case for `pl' seems right out.
>  >
>  > Has much discussion over PR 56961 taken place anywhere?  I like
>  > it as a starting point.
>
>Is anyone besides Oliver and myself interested in package version
>number reform?  I'd really like to produce a `better' set of rules
>for the handbook that eliminates some of the edge cases, and then
>re-version the relatively few ports that don't fit the rules.
>
>Oliver's PR is as good a starting point as any that I've seen--- it
>goes further than our current rules and only conflicts with them in
>one case.

http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=56961

I have thought from time-to-time that the version-numbering
scheme seems a bit hard to follow for some ports.  I don't
know if the PR does exactly what I want.  The rule of:

- characters !~ [a-zA-z0-9.] are treated as separators
   (1.0+2003.09.16 = 1.0.2003.09.16).   This may not be
   what you expect: 1.0.1+2003.09.16 < 1.0+2003.09.16

seems like it would cause confusion, for instance.  I don't
know exactly what would be a better tactic, though.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad at gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad at freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih at rpi.edu