Re: Creating a transition package for source and binary switching

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.]

In 200906200345.35499.peter.fritzs...@gmx.de, Peter Fritzsche wrote:
The idea behind it is that the 3: can go away

No, it can't.  The part before the first colon is the epoch and it is 
assumed to be 0 for any package that doesn't have one.  Therefore any 
version without an epoch will be considered to be a lower version (that 
3:1.1-2) by dpkg and any higher-level tools, including apt.

Once an epoch is in place, it is required to stay.  That's one reason the 
should be avoided if possible.
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Re: Creating a transition package for source and binary switching

[Adeodato Simó]

+ Peter Fritzsche (Sat, 20 Jun 2009 03:45:35 +0200):

 Hi,
 I wanted to ask how to do a transition package the right way. Current 
 situation is that there is a package with 3:1.1-2 in debian which changed the 
 name and version numbering slightly. Now I wanted to create a package with 
 the 
 new package. Should I now add a new source package with the new binary 
 package 
 to the debian archives and changing the old source to a transition only 
 package without any real source or what would be the right way? The idea 
 behind it is that the 3: can go away since they promised to only change the 
 numbering scheme if it doesn't violates the the ordering anymore.

If the upstream name for the software has indeed changed, the reasonable
thing to do is to create a new source package with the new name, and to
provide the newly-named binary package from there. In that case, and
only in that case (i.e., the binary package name has changed), the epoch
(3:) can go away. Do you understand why?

In this situation, and regarding the transitional package, you have two
options: creating it from the old source as you suggest, or creating it
from the new source. Normally, this latter approach is preferred, as to
not have dummy source packages lying around. However, note that the
transitional binary package has to have the epoch, whereas you wish for
the new source and binary packages not to have it. It is possible to do
that, but it takes a bit of effort. I suggest you take that approach,
and investigate how to produce binaries with different versions from a
same source package. (The answer is in the dpkg-gencontrol(1) man page;
if you use debhelper, you'll need dh_gencontrol(1) too.)

What Boyd said is correct only if there's not a package rename involved,
which doesn't seem to be the case. But his explanations on the mechanics
of an epoch are correct and may help you answer my question above.

HTH,

-- 
- Are you sure we're good?
- Always.
-- Rory and Lorelai


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Creating a transition package for source and binary switching

[Peter Fritzsche]

Hi,
I wanted to ask how to do a transition package the right way. Current 
situation is that there is a package with 3:1.1-2 in debian which changed the 
name and version numbering slightly. Now I wanted to create a package with the 
new package. Should I now add a new source package with the new binary package 
to the debian archives and changing the old source to a transition only 
package without any real source or what would be the right way? The idea 
behind it is that the 3: can go away since they promised to only change the 
numbering scheme if it doesn't violates the the ordering anymore.

Sincerely yours,
Peter


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