[pacman-dev] vercmp / force update

[Dan McGee]

On 3/5/07, Andreas Radke <a.radke at arcor.de> wrote:
> we use "vercmp" to create our diffscript
> http://archlinux.org/~andyrtr/pkg_diff.html
>
> vercmp still reports 0.8.10a < 0.8.10
>
> that's why we have to use force='y' in our PKGBUILDS that also appears
> in pkgdesc
>
> shouldn't we fix this before the release?

Not going to happen, bugfix only period has started, and Aaron and I
would consider this feature addition.

>
> i suggest to create a strict rule how to mark "alpha", "beta" and "rc"
> packages to get them detected as smaller values than the next/final and
> any other post-final "a" or "A" release.

Here is the issue, I will try to pose a good example.

0.8.10 is the version we have installed. Along comes version 0.8.10a.
Now try to tell me with certainty whether this is a newer or older
version. You cannot. If a package labels their alpha releases this
way, it is an older version, so we DO NOT want to upgrade. However, if
this is the notation used for bugfixes, then it is a newer version and
we DO want to install it.

These cases tend to be the outliers, luckily. Since we rarely would
put alpha/beta software in a repo, we don't have to worry about it
often. In addition, most packages stick with numerical only version
numbers, allowing vercmp to work correctly.

Long story short- it would be a lot of work to "fix" it, and there
isn't even a definite way to do that.

-Dan