[pacman-dev] vercmp / force update

[Roman Kyrylych]

2007/3/5, Dan McGee <dpmcgee at gmail.com>:
> 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.

Ehm, maybe silly question: why not compare package creation date/time?

-- 
Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)