Re: Multiple versions

[Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr>]

On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 12:20:27PM +0300, Dmitry Bogatov wrote:
> Currently, I am at master branch. I want install parallel-20151122.
> But it is gone since 0877e. I propose to keep *all* versions,
> but just 'parallel' refer to latest.

This would be a nightmare to maintain. And what do you do about security
updates? If libfoo-1.1.7 fixes a critical security bug, who would backport
this to libfoo-1.0.x and libfoo-1.1.0 to libfoo-1.1.6?

Then there is the combinatorial explosion. If you have 20 libraries in
10 versions each that are needed to build a derived binary, then there
will be 10^20 possible combinations. Which of them would you like to
support?

Our general policy is to keep only the latest version, except for special
cases where people see a point in keeping older versions (script languages,
libraries like qt with two major versions supported in parallel, and so on).

What is your use case? If you want reproducibility, it could make sense
to simply stick to a given git commit. If you just need a particular older
version of some code, you could keep it in your separate tree.

Andreas