Hi, On Sun, 2026-08-02 at 18:12 +0200, László Böszörményi (GCS) wrote: > On Sun, Aug 2, 2026 at 3:53 PM Ansgar <[email protected]> wrote: > > The python3-protobuf packages in Debian experimental switched to a > > different version scheme: > It follows upstream versioning [1]. Under v36.0-rc1 it lists Python.
Please see https://protobuf.dev/support/version-support/ Different languages have breaking changes at independent versions. So the major version is language-dependent. > > Â Does the package version matter on Python version detection? I think > dependant packages may check the version number directly: No, but with SemVer one often wants to have dependencies like ">= 6, < 7" which are not satisfied by a version introducing breaking changes. This cannot be expressed on the Debian package level when the major version is omitted. It also makes mapping version requirements from other packages harder: upstreams will use the Protobuf upstream versions that include the major version. That would not be correct for Debian packaging. > > (This might require that src:protobuf overrides the "Version" field > > for some binary packages.) > Â Can you show me examples of such packages? I've never done a package > binary version override. Hmm, packages like src:gcc-defaults and src:linux-signed-amd64 should do that. The relevant part is passing `-- -v{binary-version}` to `dh_gencontrol`. I guess something like ``` dh_gencontrol -- -v7.$(DEB_VERSION) ``` might work? (With DEB_VERSION from /usr/share/dpkg/pkg-info.mk.) Though one might not want to hardcode the "7." part or at least trigger an error when this changed upstream. The upstream part seem to be maintained in files like - https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/blob/main/protobuf_version.bzl - https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/blob/main/version.json Upstream changes seem to update version numbers in quite a lot of places at once: https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/commit/4b269eb436f138aac5f2a189f290ad132aebfba5 So I'm not sure which is the best place to check. Ansgar
