Re: Version numbers for VCS snapshots

[Ricardo Wurmus <ricardo.wurmus@mdc-berlin.de>]

Ben Woodcroft <b.woodcroft@uq.edu.au> writes:

> On 12/01/16 19:26, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> skribis:
>>
>>> Would it make sense to separate our version identifier from the actual
>>> release version with a different character than “.”?  Or should this be
>>> discussed elsewhere as it hasn’t anything to do with how we specify
>>> versions on the command line?
>> Probably.  Debian, for instance, uses “2.0.11-9” where “9” denotes the
>> 9th package revision of upstream version “2.0.11”.  We could probably
>> use that convention.
>>
>> In a previous discussion on this topic, I suggested that we should have
>> such a revision number instead of just “x.y.COMMIT”.  The extra
>> monotonically-increasing revision number is needed to allow upgrades to
>> work as expected.
>>
>> So, a Git snapshot’s version number could be:
>>
>>    2.0.11-3.deadbeef
>>      ^    ^    ^
>>      |    |    `— upstream commit ID
>>      |    |
>>      |    `—— 3rd Guix package revision
>>      |
>>    latest upstream version
>>
>> The next snapshot would be:
>>
>>    2.0.11-4.cafeefac
>>
>> WDYT?
> I can't see anything wrong with this myself. Is this accepted policy now?

I think this is a good policy to follow.  So far we didn’t always use
“-” to separate the upstream version from the revision + commit ID (or
did only I do this wrong?).  Some packages use “.”, which is what
prompted me to ask for clarification.

> Also, is the convention for unreleased software to take 0.0.0 as the 
> version as you suggest Ricardo e.g. 0.0.0-1.deadbeef ?

I think this is reasonable.  It’s rather unusual for software to be
released as “0.0.0”, so I don’t think we need to worry about this.  Even
then we could just update the Guix package revision number to force an
update.

~~ Ricardo