[Fedora-packaging] PackageNamingGuidelines comments

[Elliot Lee]

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005, Matthew Miller wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 24, 2005 at 02:23:48PM -0500, Elliot Lee wrote:
> > You're definitely right that there will always be some special cases, and
> > we'll have to deal them on a one-by-one basis. In that particular special
> > case, I'd prefer to use "1.0beta1" as the version.
> 
> But of course that sorts after "1.0", meaning that an epoch is required for
> the final release. 

(Yup)

> > However, the existence of this special case above doesn't prove that epoch
> > is bad or the wrong way to handle things. It's important to keep the users
> > in mind - their package searching and updating lives would be made a lot
> > easier if the Version: is as close to upstream whenever possible.
> 
> But epochs make it even more confusing for "the users", since they're a)
> arbitrary and b) mostly invisible.

That's a good point. At the same time, if epoch is used correctly, it 
will be used only to help rpm comparisons along, and in that case being 
invisible is a benefit.

It's sounding like most people are comfortable with a policy of "Use
upstream version in Version:, unless rpm comparisons will get messed up,
in which case you should munge the Release: using the guidelines given".

-- Elliot