Q: Ubuntu PPA induced version ordering mess.

[Alec Leamas]

Dear list,

Still working with the opencpn package. Now trying to normalize the 
Ubuntu PPA builds so they can are based on the same debian/ directory 
and tools as the existing Debian opencpn package.

opencpn is currently in a beta phase targeting a 5.10.1 release. The 
beta versions are like "5.9.2-beta2+dfsg-1ubuntu1~bpo2204.1". The 
upstream policy is to use 5.9.2-beta2, 5.9.3-beta3 so this ordering is, 
although a bit strange, still ok.

However, a quite large user base have PPA packages installed. These have 
versions like 8767+b2cbf5a3f~ubuntu24.04.1. The prefix is a build 
number, so they are ordered. but all these versions are higher than 
anything like 5.9.x.

I understand that one way to handle this is to just say that sloppy PPA 
version numbers is not a Debian problem. That said, are there other 
ideas out there how to handle this?

Cheers!

--alec