* Joey Hess <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [000919 11:30]: > > At the risk of being ostracized for being a smartass, the point of the > > field isn't for humans; it is for software to make automatic updating of > > systems easier and less prone to surprises. > > Yes, that's exactly my point. You're already saying this field is not > for humans. My point is we have striven to keep all fields in the > control file directly usable by humans.
And, is the use of the Version: field any different? When taken in context of a user's currently installed piece of software, this is an awful lot like an normalized version number. How does a user know to upgrade to package foobar-1.343-8 from foobar-1.34-3? How much has changed? That point difference may include a spelling fix, or it may include a format string vulnerability fix, or a suid-script-changed-to-suid-compiled-program, or any other number of things. This field is no different from version; it being normalized by policy will only make it more useful. :) Regards, seth -- Seth Arnold | http://www.willamette.edu/~sarnold/
