what's with the commas in the cyrus-imapd release tag?

John Dennis jdennis at redhat.com
Mon Aug 9 17:24:51 UTC 2004


On Sun, 2004-08-08 at 21:13, Leonard den Ottolander wrote:

Hi Leonard:

> Did you consider the consequences of using a comma in the
> version string? Did you query other developers before
> implementing?

Yes, and this was discussed internally.

> Why didn't you discuss this on list before implementing?

I thought this was answered here:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2004-July/msg00026.html

Perhaps a discussion should have occurred on fedora-devel, but given
many of the issues have to do with our internal build system, a topic
few on fedora-devel will have an appreciation of it didn't seem like the
appropriate forum.

There are 3 orthogonal pieces of information that in the past had been
collapsed into a single release number which hid why a release number
changed. It could have been anyone of the following three reasons:

* Different distribution
* Different source or spec file
* Different build of same source/spec file within a distribution

FWIW our build system forces a new revision, and hence an edit of the
spec file if any of the above three is true. This has been a source of
confusion because a bump in the revision number did not answer the
question whether it was bumped because there was some change in the
package or because it was the same source but rebuilt.

Being able to trivially answer the question is the package source code
identical when looking at two rpm's is very useful to a maintainer when
considering different rpm's. Or put another way, do two rpm's differ
only in their build environment and/or build iteration, or is a
different revision of the package? In the past these types of questions
could only be answered by reconstructing spec file change log entries, a
tedious process. As a maintainer I want to be able to answer a user's
question about which rpm to use based primarily on the contents of the
rpm, secondarily on its build environment, and only tertiary on its
build iteration and this information should be visible in the name of
the rpm.

-- 
John Dennis <jdennis at redhat.com>





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