%{?dist}, recommended or optional?

[Ville Skyttä]

On Sun, 2006-01-08 at 12:49 +0330, Roozbeh Pournader wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-01-07 at 19:33 -0800, Michael A. Peters wrote:
> > When I package development snapshots - I like to do
> > 
> > 0%{?dist}.n.%{cvs_release}
> > 
> > where n is an integer number.
> > 
> > I increment the n with every spec file (in case I need to change to an
> > older checkout) - and when a final release is made, everything after
> > %{?dist} is dropped - and the 0 I bump to a 1.
> > 
> > See http://mpeters.us/silgraphite/silgraphite.spec
> > 
> > I don't know that that is the best way to do it - but it works well for
> > me.
> 
> >From what I deduce from http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DistTag and
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageNamingGuidelines , everyone should
> do the same, except that one should use a different format:
> 
> 0.n.%{cvs_release}%{?dist}
> 
> Do you have any specific reason to put %{dist} before the number? If
> yes, perhaps the recommendations should be changed.

That will not behave as expected with distro upgrades.  Any snapshot
built for eg. FC-4 would be always treated as newer than any snapshot
for FC-3, regardless of the snapshot date or the value of "n".  On the
other hand, the newest package version for the newer distro shouldn't
really be older than the newest for the old one anyway.