Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Server Test 58 [Robert Collins, this one is for you]

[Harold L Hunt <huntharo at msu dot edu>]

Sylvain,

> Does it means the installed version isn't the test
> release ?

I downloaded the XWin-Test59.exe.bz2 file and the
XFree86-xserv-4.2.0-6.tar.bz2 package from archive.progeny.com.  Both archives
had the version of XWin.exe from 20020614 (which is the Test59 binary).  You
must be inadvertantly pointing your `tar jvtf' at an older version of
XFree86-xserv-4.2.0-6.tar.bz2.

I don't like to have the Server Test Series releases distributed via setup.exe
(because of versioning questions that I'm about to describe), but I decided to
do it anyway to try to increase the testing of the Server Test Series
releases.

The primary problem is that to make test releases available via setup.exe I
need to put a caveat lector (let the reader beware) for setup.exe users in the
release announcements that would be so huge as to distract attention from the
test release itself.  The problem, as I see it, is that I need someway to
version test releases such that I can indicate that one test release is newer
than other test releases but also so that any given test release is seen as
older than the latest stable release.  The way I've chosen to do that for now
is to give the test releases the version number of the *next* stable release. 
If I release 5 unstable releases between a stable release they will all have
the same version.

What is a user to do? Any user that messes with installing Server Test Series
releases via Cygwin's setup.exe must uninstall their XFree86-xserv package
before attempting to grab the latest Server Test Series release or any new
stable release.  Why?  Because setup.exe doesn't know that a package with
version 4.2.0-6 with date 2002-06-13 is older than the next Server Test Series
(or stable) release 4.2.0-6 with date 2002-06-14.

The behavior that I want from Cygwin's setup.exe, if it isn't already present
and clearly documented, is as such:

1) Allow a different versioning scheme for the `test:' tag in setup.hint than
the `curr:' tag (i.e., allow a test versioning scheme of 20020613-2245 for
test and 4.2.0-6 for 'curr'.

2) Allow some way to indicate that the latest stable release supersedes all
test releases up to a certain version.  Alternatively, the test version could
be 4.2.0-6-test-20020613-2245 (or something similar, whatever you need to make
parsing easy and to retain compatibility with other versioning schemes).

3) When setup.exe sees that 4.2.0-6 stable is available it installs 4.2.0-6
stable overtop of whatever test release is installed (if the user allows the
upgrade).

Hmm... maybe I just have to use both the `curr:' and the `test:' tag in
setup.hint and update them every time?

One last question then: does setup.exe *ever* try to upgrade a test release to
a stable release?  Or does setup.exe just assume that any user who has
installed a test release has taken the responsibility upon themselves as to
when they should upgrade to the newest stable release?

Harold