[torquedev] Re: what happened to 2.4.0?

[Bogdan Costescu]

> My problem is that the version strings can't be automatically parsed 
> any more. There is no way for package managers to know relative ages 
> of things like: 2.4.0b1 < 2.4.0 < 2.4.0p1 < 2.4.0r1, etc.  Is "p1" 
> prerelease1 or patch1? Anyone not privy to the details can't know.

What exactly part of packaging do you refer to ? It's common practice 
to call a beta version

packagename-1.2.3-0b1.i386.rpm

and the next beta

packagename-1.2.3-0b2.i386.rpm

while the final release will be

packagename-1.2.3-1.i386.rpm

The part that is not so easy though is the packager's who will have to 
know and/or code in the .spec that packagename-1.2.3b1.tar.gz produces 
packagename-1.2.3-0b1.i386.rpm. I seem to remember seeing some 
(semi-)automated way of achieving this, maybe in one of the RPMForge 
.spec files, but that was 2-3 years ago and memory is fuzzy.

-- 
Bogdan Costescu

IWR, University of Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany
Phone: +49 6221 54 8240, Fax: +49 6221 54 8850
E-mail: bogdan.costescu at iwr.uni-heidelberg.de