Hi! On Tue, 2024-07-02 at 00:54:13 +0100, Wookey wrote: > On 2024-07-01 23:59 +0200, Alec Leamas wrote: > > But this is not about third parties, it's about upstream which publishes PPA > > packages. So far these are by far the most used Linux packages. > > > > I also hesitate to add an epoch, after all they are basically considered > > evil. But if we should not use them when upstream has a broken versioning we > > are about to replace, when should we use it? > > Quite. People are quite resistant to spoiling neat version numbers > with epochs, and no-one likes them, but they don't do any actual harm > (except sometimes break scripts and tools that forgot to allow for > them),
Oh, but they can cause actual harm. As has been mentioned on this list many times, epochs by design invalidate existing versioned relationships in both packaging fields (inside the distro (but in this case that does not look like a problem) and on custom local packages), and on tools/(maint)scripts comparing these versions. These can either cause letting versions that should not be installed through, or can cause version unsatisfiability. There's also the problem that epochs are (currently) not included as part of the filenames. They are also a common source of errors, due to people forgetting they need to add them in relationships (if you read package changelogs, this is a common-ish occurrence). This is covered in the dpkg FAQ (although I should probably also add the accidental omission case): https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/FAQ#Q:_What_are_version_epochs_and_why_and_when_are_they_needed.3F > and this seems seems like a very sensible use case: essentially > jus thwat they are intended for.. Yes it was upstream that messed up > not us/you, but we have the technology and you can make user's lives > easier by just adding an epoch. I guess the first question that pops in my mind is whether users who have installed the packages from the PPA, because the Debian/Ubuntu packages were not satisfactory, are going to be switching to the Debian/Ubuntu packages? Perhaps only temporarily and then back to the PPA? Are we going to get a version arms-race then? (Personally I'd find the "sort the mess on the PPA side", the better approach, but *shrug*.) > It's a pity upsream didn't know about the 0~ trick so that it wouldn't > matter what crazy version string was used, but it's done now. AFAIUI upstream was using "correct" versions in their releases, they just used the build-increment-based versions in that PPA. Thanks, Guillem
