[Fedora-packaging] Confused by non-numeric version in release guideline

Ralf Corsepius rc040203 at freenet.de
Tue Jan 13 12:45:54 UTC 2009


Richard W.M. Jones schrieb:
> This package just numbers their tarballs using the subversion release
> number.  For example, 'r8' and 'r11':
> 
>   http://code.google.com/p/dlfcn-win32/downloads/list
> 
> As far as I'm aware they are not planning on using "real" version
> numbers at any time in the future, nor have they used real version
> numbers in the past.

> I don't understand which if any of these guidelines apply to this
> case:
> 
>   https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/NamingGuidelines#NonNumericRelease

Not quite. These guidelines are referring to assuring consistency of common
upstream pre-release/alpha-/beta- (eg. 1.2.3pre1), upstream 
post-release/bugfix
(e.g. 1.2.3fix1), VCS/date-versioning (e.g. 1.2.3-20081230) schemes with 
"pure numerical" versioning schemes (e.g. 1.2.3).

> In particular, what should the Version be?  (And while we're at it,
> what should the Release be?)
rpm-wise, versions and releases are mere "strings", with complex 
comparision-operations attached to them.

I.e. there is no requirement to have mere numerical %version-%releases, 
strings are allowed.

The only restriction is each package's NEVR to be steadily increasing 
between different versions of a package, wrt. rpm's version comparision 
operations.

I.e. if I understand your case correctly (upstream using r<N>), you 
could directly use their version strings as %version and chose %release 
at your personal preference.

Ralf






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