[pacman-dev] vercmp discussion (was: String freeze for 3.2 release)

[Nagy Gabor]

> It indeed looks like we just need to handle the case where it runs out
> of segments on one string.
> But we have to handle two cases : run out of segments with the
> -release number or without it.
> So in both cases, I handle it differently if the last remaining
> segment starts with a letter or not.
> 
> I am not 100% sure that it will work correctly in every single cases,
> but the logic seems alright, there is no regression on all existing
> vercmp test, and the 4 new tests you posted in an older thread now
> pass fine.

I did a quick read on the new vercmp code. This is not an easy-to-read
code (and IMHO it is a bit overkill: strdup, free? - this is not
related to your patch), but it seems OK to me. Overall it is much better
than pre-patch state.

Some little observations:
1. This vercmp the code doesn't follow alpm code style (not related
to your patch, again):
	while (*one == '0') one++;
	if(!(*one && *two)) break;
I like this one-liners better than {} 3 liner version of these.
Is this allowed in our patches, too?
2. A very little notice:
Now 1.5b < 1.5, but 1.5.b > 1.5
In the "block terminology" of the code, 1.5b and 1.5.b are identical.
The difference appeared, because your patch uses isalpha() instead of
some "next block is alpha?" computation. To be honest, this may be
better than 1.5.b < 1.5, so you can skip this casuist note.

Bye