Warren's Package Naming Proposal - Revision 2

[Owen Taylor]

On Mon, 2003-11-17 at 11:56, Michael K. Johnson wrote:

> > How should we set the RPM fields without using epochs in this type of
> > versionning ? Is is a case where epoch is necessary ?
> 
> Definitely do NOT use epoch here.  I have heard that somewhere there is
> a theory circulating that these cases require epoch, and they are like
> practical examples of the apocryphal stories of philosophers debating
> the number of teeth in a horse's mouth without once walking into the
> barn to check!

All experience with using Epoch leads to one conclusion:

 Never, never, never, use Epoch.

It's better to use version numbers that have no relationship at all
to the upstream version than to use an Epoch. That is, if someone
can't be disuaded from calling their packages:

 foo-alpha
 foo-beta
 foo-gamma
 foo-delta

Use versions 1alpha 2beta 3gamma 4delta. If you didn't see delta
coming, then go with fedora1delta, fedora2epsilon, or something.

It may be ugly, but at least you don't have hidden version information
that people will use in some places and not others, resulting in
Requires: foo >= epsilon that do absolutely nothing.

Regards,
						Owen