At 17:46 14/12/98 +0100, Konrad Hinsen wrote:
the anarchists, the middle-of-the-roaders, and John Skaller. The control freaks (me, Fred, and Konrad -- at least you two said you agree with me!) are in favour of prescribing *syntax* for version numbers and *suggesting* semantics. The *proposed* syntax and semantics that I
Right, and it seems worth pointing out again why, or rather to what extent, the interpretation of version numbers should be unified.
The criterion is that it must be clear both for human users and for installation programs 1) which of two versions is newer
You are making a hidden assumption. That the development process in linear. A comparator for packages is at best a partial order: some packages may be linearly ordered, but it is far too much of a constraint on developers to require this. Therefore, 'newer' is not an appropriate requirement. A more appropriate comparator is a partial order 'is compatible with'; meaning that you can safely upgrade. It also follows that 'numbers' are an inadequate representation of upgrade compatibility. ------------------------------------------------------- John Skaller email: skaller@maxtal.com.au http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller phone: 61-2-96600850 snail: 10/1 Toxteth Rd, Glebe NSW 2037, Australia