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Re: Pending packages status


Christopher Faylor wrote:

Pavel:
:) It is not my personal preference, though it may seem like it is.

Max:
Ah, remembering the recent discussions, I think it *is* exactly your
preference :}.

Max:
Personally, I don't see why the 1st release of a package need be -1, and I
think that, in abstract, a version number should uniqely identify a version.

On the other hand, I don't remember any confusion caused by the current
practice.

cgf:
I don't have strong feelings about this other than that I think it would
be odd for the first release of a pacakge to be bushwa-1.10-15 and, given
some of the packaging discussions here, that is entirely possible.  I like
being able to look at an announcement and figuring out from the subject
if this is a recent release or not.

Given that we haven't had any problems with starting out at 1, I think
we should continue to work that way.

Yep, IIRC it *was* Pavel's personal preference. It cetainly isn't mine. I agree with Max: packages should be uniquely identified, to avoid confusion *during the prerelease phase*. Imagine:


"Bob, there's a proplem with your foo-1.3.2-1 package"
"That's fixed in the third release of foo-1.3.2-1"
"Wait, Bob, I thought I was using the third release. Are you sure?"
"Nope, you're right -- it's the *fourth* release that fixes the problem. Here's the package md5sum..."
"Um, bob, I just downloaded foo-1.3.2-1 and it has md5sum xxxx. Is that newer, or older than the mythical fourth release?"
"Yeah, sorry about that. I gave you the md5sum of the fourth pre-release. I expected that you would simply compare it to the md5sum of the package you've been complaining about (#3 ?). However, you can't download the #3 nor #4 prereleases anymore. We're up to the sixth pre-release, and THAT is what you just downloaded..."


This is especially true in my case, since for autotool releases I tend to put them up on my website in setup-compatible form prior even to "test:" releases on the cygwin mirrors. I *need* to keep pre-release and pre-test versions unique if there have been any changes in them. Or I'll hork off my testers...

As far as chris's comments go, he is right that we haven't yet had too many problems -- because most pre-release packages have not been "setup-installable". Thus, no problems (except for communication issues, as described above).

I expect that as the cygwin userbase grows(*) that both of these conditions will change. (*) And recent evidence on the mailing list suggests that the cygwin userbase IS growing.

--Chuck



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