[Rpm-ecosystem] Special meaning of "+" (?) separator

Florian Festi ffesti at redhat.com
Mon Sep 12 12:07:08 UTC 2016


Changing the way + is treated in version compare is really a bad idea.
So this feature would need a new char that is currently not permitted in
versions. Candidates include: #, ^, @, §, $, ?

For now I have a weak leaning towards ^ (caret) as it indicates
bigger/up although it is used with the opposite meaning in git (where
HEAD^ is one older). It also does not carry much other meaning elsewhere
that could be confused that easily.

Any other suggestions or arguments?

On 09/09/2016 10:24 PM, Igor Gnatenko wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> during process of getting tilde approved in Fedora Packaging
> Guidelines we realized that we need some special handling for
> separator (most probably) "+".
> 
> Some examples (left is what expected, right is what current situation):
> 1.0+ > 1.0              | 1.0+ == 1.0
> 1.0+20160101git < 1.0.1 | 1.0+20160101git > 1.0.1
> 
> During long discussion at #rpm.org on freenode with Florian and Panu:
> 
> 1. Florian didn't like to change behavior of "+" as it's already
> allowed character and people might expect it to do something
> different.
> 2. From alternative symbols we needed to choose from: "@", "#", "^"
> 
> After thinking more about problem I realized that we probably just
> change behavior of "+".
> Some questions are still in my mind:
> * vercmp: 1~ ? 1+
I think we already nailed that one.

> * How "+" should be handled in (Build)Requires?
>     * BuildRequires: foo == 1+ should match 1+, 1+git, 1+whatever ?
>     * BuildRequires: foo >= 1 should match 1, 1.1, 1+git, 1.1+whatever ?
>     * BuildRequires: foo < 1+ should match 1, 1~git, 0.whatever ?

I really don't think BuildRequires should be treated special. They are
just the Requires of the SRPM and should use the same mechanics as
everything else.

Florian


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