Hi Jens,
On 02/07/2024 06:38, Jens Reyer wrote:
You may avoid the epoch if upstream is willing to provide a separate
package for about 2 years. (I did something similar to get rid of an
epoch in Ubuntu's wine packages a few years ago, replacing them with our
Debian packages):
package 9000.5.10
Depends: package-transition-to-new-versioning
package-transition-to-new-versioning 5.9.2-1
In 2 years:
package-transition-to-new-versioning 5.9.2-2
Depends: package 5.9.2-2
You'll also need some breaks/replaces in Debian's packages.
I might dig out the details later if your interested.
Thanks for interesting input, I do appreciate it even if I don't think
it works in this case for two reasons.
The first is that upstream should accept to use a package version like
9000.5.x. Even if it's for a limited time it's a very hard sell. Russ
Allberry phrased this well earlier in this thread.
The second is that this is navigation software used in boats and ships
which often are off line. In this context users tends to cling to their
working installations. That is, it will take a long time before the
existing 8764.x versions are gone, much longer than two years.
OTOH, I understand the idea and can see it being useful in other cases.
Cheers!
--alec
