Re: tlug: updates

[Scott Stone <sstone@example.com>]

On Thu, 11 Jun 1998, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> >>>>> "Scott" == Scott Stone <sstone@example.com> writes:
> 
>     Scott> Just a hint - you may want to check the 'do downgrades'
>     Scott> checkbox in the Options screen when doing updates - some
>     Scott> versioning schemes don't quite make it obvious that a
>     Scott> version is newer than another one... comparing them isn't
>     Scott> as easy as you might think, so I'll need to update the
>     Scott> comparison algorithm later to have more intelligence.  It
>     Scott> should handle 95% of the possible cases correctly, but
>     Scott> every once in a while you'll get a weird one.
> 
> debian/rules
> 
> :-)
> 
> Use an "epoch" in your version strings.  Choose a separator character
> (Debian uses `:') not allowed in package names or version strings.  If 
> this character is missing, the epoch defaults to 0.  Otherwise, it
> must be numerical, and in faux-BNF,
> 
> package_string := package_name n-separator
>                   epoch e-separator
>                   upstream-version v-separator
>                   TL-revision
>                   other-stuff-eg-architecture
>                   ".rpm"
> 
> This allows you to handle upstream packages that do sequencing like
> 1.1, 1.2, 1, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2, ... (ie, what we normally think of as
> the minor version actually indicated some sort of pre-release).  So we 
> have 0:1.1, 0:1.2, 1:1, 1:2.1, 1:2.2, 1:2.3, 2:2, ....  Ugly as sin,
> but it works....
> 
> 'Course, rpm will probably barf.  You may need to choose the character 
> so that rpm thinks it's part of the package name.  Arggh.

RPM doesn't determine the version/name from the filename, it stores it in
its database.  I could rename sendmail-8.9.0-2TL.i386.rpm to
foo-bar.i386.rpm and it would still know that it's sendmail version 8.9.0,
release 2TL.

RPM does support a 'serial number' field, which I'm just now starting to
use.. I don't think turbopkg uses it now though.

--------------------------------------------------
Scott M. Stone <sstone@example.com, sstone@example.com>
               <sstone@example.com>
Linux Developer/Systems Administrator for Pacific HiTech, Inc. 
http://www.pht.com		http://armadillo.pht.co.jp
http://www.pht.co.jp	        http://www.turbolinux.com


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