Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: category version limited to digits and dots

[Rob Weir]

On Mon, May 17, 2004 at 09:12:06PM -0400, James Blackwell said
> >>>Why is there a limitation in arch that the project version must only 
> >>>contain digits and dots?
> >> 
> >> 
> >> I don't know, that's just the way it is. It's a little annoyance, but in
> >> reality it just does not matter. There are lots of ways around it.
> >> 
> >
> > It would be good if "tla executives" would reconsider this "executive 
> > decision" :-)
> 
> Glad you realized I was kidding around. Seriously, the reason is that
> once alphas enter the equation, sorting stops making sense. For example,
> right now, when you type tla get this--that, tla is capable of figuring
> out what version is the newest and getting that automatically. 
> 
> Things could get messy really quickly if there were 2.6a and 2.6b. In
> english, yeah, 'a' comes before 'b', but in some languages, there are
> different characters in different orders.

dpkg does sorting on alpha-numeric-plus-some-other-stuff versions just
fine, and it's even more dependant on ordering than arch is.  In fact,
dpkg is under the same license as tla, so someone could just steal the
code for it and drop it into arch.  I vaaaaaaguely remember asking
whether this would be welcome, but I can't remember what Tom said.

-- 
Rob Weir <address@hidden> | address@hidden  |  Do I look like I want a CC?
Words of the day:   Pope South Africa supercomputer Cheney ANC INS Fidel Castro

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