> On Tue, 23 Jun 1998, Philip Hands wrote: > > > for all future time. People make mistakes choosing version numbers, > > and we have a mechanism for recovering these mistakes. People being > > ``inventive'' so they can maintain the aesthetic beauty of a control > > file that is rarely seen by anyone is a waste of all our time. > > it's more than just 'aesthetic beauty'. > > 'dpkg -l' output is hard-coded for 80 columns, and there are only a > limited number of character positions available for the version number. > extracting the version from the listing is not possible for long version > strings.
Which is actually another reason for using epochs, that I'd not previously realised, since epochs don't show up, whereas random suffixes do: [phil] palm:~$ dpkg -l libgtk1 Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge | Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed |/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=b ||/ Name Version Description +++-===============-==============-========================================= ii libgtk1 1.0.4-1 The GIMP Toolkit set of widgets for X ^^^^^^^ Nice clean version here, but wait... [phil] palm:~$ dpkg -s libgtk1 Package: libgtk1 Status: install ok installed Priority: optional Section: libs Installed-Size: 862 Maintainer: Ben Gertzfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Source: gtk+ Version: 1:1.0.4-1 <----- Shock Horror!!! I've seen an epoch, I'll ... have to pluck my eyes out now ;-) Cheers, Phil. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]