[pacman-dev] [PATCH] Add information on version comparison to manpages

[Dan McGee]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 3:46 AM, Nagy Gabor <ngaba at bibl.u-szeged.hu> wrote:
>> Signed-off-by: Dan McGee <dan at archlinux.org>
>> ---
>>  doc/PKGBUILD.5.txt |    3 ++-
>>  doc/pacman.8.txt   |    8 +++++++-
>>  2 files changed, 9 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/doc/PKGBUILD.5.txt b/doc/PKGBUILD.5.txt
>> index b90d67a..0b1ce64 100644
>> --- a/doc/PKGBUILD.5.txt
>> +++ b/doc/PKGBUILD.5.txt
>> @@ -214,7 +214,8 @@ similar to `$_basekernver`.
>>               Force the package to be upgraded by a pacman system
>> upgrade operation, even if the version number would normally not
>> trigger such an upgrade. This is useful when the version numbering
>> scheme
>> -             of a package changes (or is alphanumeric).
>> +             of a package changes (or is alphanumeric). See
>> linkman:pacman[8] for
>> +             more infomation on version comparisons.
>>
>>
>>  build() Function
>> diff --git a/doc/pacman.8.txt b/doc/pacman.8.txt
>> index 5594ac6..08764de 100644
>> --- a/doc/pacman.8.txt
>> +++ b/doc/pacman.8.txt
>> @@ -61,7 +61,13 @@ provide the same functionality as foo will be
>> searched for. If any package is found, it will be installed.
>>  +
>>  You can also use `pacman -Su` to upgrade all packages that are out
>> of date. See -<<SO,Sync Options>> below.
>> +<<SO,Sync Options>> below. When upgrading, pacman performs version
>> comparison +to determine which packages need upgrading. This behavior
>> operates as follows: +
>> +  Alphanumeric:
>> +    1.0 < 1.0a < 1.0alpha < 1.0b < 1.0beta < 1.0p < 1.0pre < 1.0rc
>
> Sorry guys, I don't like this at all. I think the old behavior was
> better. And I don't see the reason of this change. We have many
> packages with alphanumeric version atm: a2ps-4.13c-1,
> aalib-1.4rc5-1, ... and I'm pretty sure that the expected behavior is
> that aalib-1.4 should upgrade aalib-1.4rc5-1, like earlier.

But what is the expected behavior for a2ps with the 'c' in there? Does
4.13 come before 4.13b? You are saying "I don't like this" without a
whole lot of justification and you even gave me a converse example as
far as I can tell. And I would tend to trust the upstream RPM guys
quite a bit when it comes to version number ordering, as they deal
with this a lot.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=50977
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=178798

-Dan