On Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:56:02 -0500, Rick Thomas wrote: > On Nov 8, 2011, at 2:07 AM, Sthu Deus wrote: > >> it seems to me to be weird having those "epoches" > > If all software developers were "well behaved" and they all co- operated > in their versioning, it would be weird to have "epochs". All versions, > from all sources, would be monotonically increasing as a function of > time. > > But, as we know, software developers are an independent bunch of > cowboys. Sometimes, for reasons that seem good and reasonable to the > individual upstream developer involved, software version time seems to > run backwards. "Epochs" are there so the rest of us (who aren't > upstream developers) can pretend it didn't do that -- when the > developers glitch their versions, we just move into a different epoch > and go on about our lives.
It might be less confusing for the uninitiated though, if the term used were "incarnation" rather than "epoch"; at least IMHO. Especially so in the light of the other *nix use of the term epoch regarding time. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/j9c9cb$3jh$1...@dough.gmane.org