Re: Version numbering en package name?

"Also sprach Bas van Schaik:"
> While preparing to package enbd for Debian, I ran in to two
> non-technical problems/questions:
> 
> - why is the source tar called "nbd", this is rather confusing and
> causes a name clash with the original nbd

Is it? On the ftp server both names are given:

  ....
  -rw-r--r--   1 root     kmem      1363566 Mar 13 00:00 nbd-2.4.32.tgz
  lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root           14 Mar 13 00:00 enbd-2.4.32.tgz -> nbd-2.4.32.tgz
  -rw-r--r--   1 root     prof      1407394 Mar 13 00:00 nbd-2.4.33pre.tgz
  lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root           17 Mar 13 00:00 enbd-2.4.33pre.tgz -> nbd-2.4.33pre.tgz
  oboe:/home/ftp/pub/Programs% 

Historically the package was called nbd, and at some point changes were
made to move names into the enbd domain. The archives are handled by
"make" so I just type "make" and I am no longer familar with what
happens after that! The development area has all the directories called
nbd-*, so I suppose that the archive is made as nbd-* of a subdir called
nbd-* and then moved into the ftp site where it is softlinked as
enbd-*.

I guess I could do something about renaming the directory in the
archive first before packing. Is that the problem? 

> - what's the exact idea behind the version numbering? 2.4.32 makes me

2.4.32 is 32nd in the 2.4 major release. I see that the scheme went

   1.0.*
   1.1.*
   1.2.*
   1.3.*
   2.1.*
   2.2.*
   2.3.*
   2.4.*

I'll make 2.4.33 final soon. I generally work ON a development release
(as 2.4.33 has been) without making a new package for it, just flushing
the snapshot to the archive server, where it is always packaged as, for
example, 2.4.33pre, without any indication other than the "pre" that (a)
it may change from day to day, and (b) is not the same as yesterday
despite not having a date as part of the release name. People know that
the pre is variable.

That's because I have very little space. I would end up with 365
releases a year if the pre was numbered by date.

A packaging scheme for debian would be to release the stable package
(here 2.4.32, soon to be 2.4.33) as 2.4.x, and release the unstable
or testing package as 2.4.Xpre-date.

Peter


Peter