Re: MELPA version numbers

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> Firstly, when there *is* an author-assigned version, it must be
> visible in the checked-in code for MELPA to see, and not filled in by
> a release script.

Right.  The way the GNU ELPA archive is built, we just require this info.
But I guess for MELPA you'd like to be able to get by without any
cooperation from the author.  Good point.

> A related loophole is that non-authors can take someone's v0.1 library, hack
> it, and then upload the resulting package to Marmalade as v0.2. (Yes, this
> happens!) MELPA would then continue to build uninstallable point releases of
> v0.1 from the author's SCM repo until the Marmalade issue is resolved.

This is the problem of forking, which is inherently problematic for
version numbers.

It looks like all those problems could be solved with the addition of
a "release date" info.  This way, package.el can use release-date and
version-number ordering disagreement as a hint that the automation might
not do the right thing, and warn the user about it, letting him figure
out what should happen.


        Stefan