using the tilde in tarball versions

[Daniel Pocock]

Hi,

I've had a look at
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=734802

and I understand that tildes are supported by new versions of RPM, but
not by Fedora infrastructure

I'm currently trying to prepare an upstream project to build tarballs
and I would like to use tildes in the version number of the test
tarballs and distribute them through the upstream web site.  They won't
be uploaded to Fedora until a real release (without any tilde) is
tagged.  Users will manually rpmbuild packages from the tarballs.

Is it considered OK to use the tilde in this manner?  I presume that if
a user downloads such a tarball to an older system, they will have
issues with it but anybody using F18+ will be OK?

Regards,

Daniel

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 05/01/2013 12:59 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
>  Hi,
>
>  I've had a look at
>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=734802
>
>  and I understand that tildes are supported by new versions of RPM, but
>  not by Fedora infrastructure
>
>  I'm currently trying to prepare an upstream project to build tarballs
>  and I would like to use tildes in the version number of the test
>  tarballs and distribute them through the upstream web site. 
Can you explain why do
want to do so?

To me personally, there is not any single reason for using ~ in version 
numbers, except of lack of experience of upstreams, who do not 
understand that ~ and other special characters ($€?!) cause a lot of 
confusion.

Ralf

[Daniel Pocock]

On 01/05/13 16:56, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>  On 05/01/2013 12:59 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've had a look at
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=734802
> >
> > and I understand that tildes are supported by new versions of RPM, but
> > not by Fedora infrastructure
> >
> > I'm currently trying to prepare an upstream project to build tarballs
> > and I would like to use tildes in the version number of the test
> > tarballs and distribute them through the upstream web site.
>  Can you explain why do want to do so?
>
>  To me personally, there is not any single reason for using ~ in
>  version numbers, except of lack of experience of upstreams, who do not
>  understand that ~ and other special characters ($€?!) cause a lot of
>  confusion.
>  
There are various factors in this particular project that will lead to
confusion, the existence of 3 forks each releasing with the same name
probably makes the question of tildes look rather tame

For my purposes, these are not official releases and will not be tagged
in the upstream repository, so they can't have names like
project-3.3.0.tar.gz

The goal is to release project-3.3.0.tar.gz in a few weeks.

I am working on trunk which has 3.3 in AC_INIT.  There is a 3.2 branch
and that is unrelated to this work.

Therefore, using names like project-3.3.0~test1.tar.gz makes it clear that:

project-3.2*.tar.gz  < project-3.3.0~test1.tar.gz < project-3.3.0.tar.gz

Using a name like project-3.2.999.nextrelease.1.tar.gz would also ensure
proper sequencing but I feel that is more confusing.

Regards,

Daniel

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Wed, May 01, 2013 at 05:32:12PM +0200, Daniel Pocock wrote:
>  On 01/05/13 16:56, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>  > On 05/01/2013 12:59 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
>  >>
>  >> Hi,
>  >>
>  >> I've had a look at
>  >> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=734802
>  >>
>  >> and I understand that tildes are supported by new versions of RPM, but
>  >> not by Fedora infrastructure
>  >>
>  >> I'm currently trying to prepare an upstream project to build tarballs
>  >> and I would like to use tildes in the version number of the test
>  >> tarballs and distribute them through the upstream web site. 
In answer to the original question, upstreams can do what they like
irregardless of rpm.  If an official fedora package were to be built using
your tarball we'd manually "normalize" the tilde to something else
(probably
a dash).  Fedora policy is not to use tildes; it doesn't haveto do with what
the underlying technologies support.

>  > Can you explain why do want to do so?
>  >
>  > To me personally, there is not any single reason for using ~ in
>  > version numbers, except of lack of experience of upstreams, who do not
>  > understand that ~ and other special characters ($€?!) cause a lot of
>  > confusion.
>  >
>  There are various factors in this particular project that will lead to
>  confusion, the existence of 3 forks each releasing with the same name
>  probably makes the question of tildes look rather tame
>  
>  For my purposes, these are not official releases and will not be tagged
>  in the upstream repository, so they can't have names like
>  project-3.3.0.tar.gz
>  
>  The goal is to release project-3.3.0.tar.gz in a few weeks.
>  
>  I am working on trunk which has 3.3 in AC_INIT.  There is a 3.2 branch
>  and that is unrelated to this work.
>  
>  Therefore, using names like project-3.3.0~test1.tar.gz makes it clear that:
>  
>  project-3.2*.tar.gz  < project-3.3.0~test1.tar.gz < project-3.3.0.tar.gz
>  
>  Using a name like project-3.2.999.nextrelease.1.tar.gz would also ensure
>  proper sequencing but I feel that is more confusing.
>   
project-3.3.0-test1.tar.gz would also seem to work just as well and
additionally won't run into specialcases where people are using regexes to
parse version strings and they don't anticipate a tilde being used.

The tilde doesn't designate that general sorting algorithms will place the
filename before the base version in the general tools case.  It is only
special tools that recognize that usage.

-Toshio

[Daniel Pocock]

On 01/05/13 19:39, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
>  On Wed, May 01, 2013 at 05:32:12PM +0200, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> > On 01/05/13 16:56, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> >> On 05/01/2013 12:59 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> I've had a look at
> >>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=734802
> >>>
> >>> and I understand that tildes are supported by new versions of RPM, but
> >>> not by Fedora infrastructure
> >>>
> >>> I'm currently trying to prepare an upstream project to build tarballs
> >>> and I would like to use tildes in the version number of the test
> >>> tarballs and distribute them through the upstream web site.
>  
>  In answer to the original question, upstreams can do what they like
>  irregardless of rpm.  If an official fedora package were to be built using
>  your tarball we'd manually "normalize" the tilde to something else
> (probably
>  a dash).  Fedora policy is not to use tildes; it doesn't haveto do with what
>  the underlying technologies support.
>  
> >> Can you explain why do want to do so?
> >>
> >> To me personally, there is not any single reason for using ~ in
> >> version numbers, except of lack of experience of upstreams, who do not
> >> understand that ~ and other special characters ($€?!) cause a lot of
> >> confusion.
> >>
> > There are various factors in this particular project that will lead to
> > confusion, the existence of 3 forks each releasing with the same name
> > probably makes the question of tildes look rather tame
> >
> > For my purposes, these are not official releases and will not be tagged
> > in the upstream repository, so they can't have names like
> > project-3.3.0.tar.gz
> >
> > The goal is to release project-3.3.0.tar.gz in a few weeks.
> >
> > I am working on trunk which has 3.3 in AC_INIT.  There is a 3.2 branch
> > and that is unrelated to this work.
> >
> > Therefore, using names like project-3.3.0~test1.tar.gz makes it clear that:
> >
> > project-3.2*.tar.gz  < project-3.3.0~test1.tar.gz < project-3.3.0.tar.gz
> >
> > Using a name like project-3.2.999.nextrelease.1.tar.gz would also ensure
> > proper sequencing but I feel that is more confusing.
> >
>  project-3.3.0-test1.tar.gz would also seem to work just as well and
>  additionally won't run into specialcases where people are using regexes to
>  parse version strings and they don't anticipate a tilde being used. 
That seems problematic for various reasons:

- when I build a test rpm (which is one reason for the test tarball), it
would end up with a name like project-3.3.0-test1-1.tar.gz

- looking at this doc, it is not clear if it will take `3.3.0-test1' as
the version, or if it will be `3.3.0' and release will be `test1':

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Archive:Tools/RPM/VersionComparison

and in any case, 3.3.0-test1 > 3.3.0, while 3.3.0 = 3.3.0, so in no case
can I see how to make a version that is < 3.3.0


>  The tilde doesn't designate that general sorting algorithms will
> place the
>  filename before the base version in the general tools case.  It is only
>  special tools that recognize that usage. 
Will the tools rpm and maybe yum behave the same way as dpkg does with
tildes, at least on a very recent install such as F18 or F19?

http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/footnotes.html#f37

One of my aims with these tarballs is to verify that the final release
will work smoothly with a wide range of packaging tools.

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Wed, May 01, 2013 at 20:37:44 +0200,
   Daniel Pocock <daniel(a)pocock.com.au&gt; wrote:
> That seems problematic for various reasons:
>
> - when I build a test rpm (which is one reason for the test tarball), it
> would end up with a name like project-3.3.0-test1-1.tar.gz
>
> - looking at this doc, it is not clear if it will take `3.3.0-test1' as
> the version, or if it will be `3.3.0' and release will be `test1':
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Archive:Tools/RPM/VersionComparison
>
> and in any case, 3.3.0-test1 > 3.3.0, while 3.3.0 = 3.3.0, so in no case
> can I see how to make a version that is < 3.3.0 
The way you should do it is use 3.3.0 for the version and 0.X.test1%{dist} 
for the release, where X is a number that gets incremented for each test1 
build.

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Wed, May 01, 2013 at 08:37:44PM +0200, Daniel Pocock wrote:
>  On 01/05/13 19:39, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
>  >>
>  > project-3.3.0-test1.tar.gz would also seem to work just as well and
>  > additionally won't run into specialcases where people are using regexes to
>  > parse version strings and they don't anticipate a tilde being used.
>  
>  That seems problematic for various reasons:
>  
>  - when I build a test rpm (which is one reason for the test tarball), it
>  would end up with a name like project-3.3.0-test1-1.tar.gz
>   
Just noting that this is the tarball and has nothing to do with the rpm.

>  - looking at this doc, it is not clear if it will take
> `3.3.0-test1' as
>  the version, or if it will be `3.3.0' and release will be `test1':
>   
This is entirely up to you and your tooling. It has nothing to do with rpm.
rpm doesn't take a tarball name and decide how to break it up into name,
version, release on its own (and neither does dpkg).  That's something that
you decide when you write the spec file.

The best thing for your tooling to do is to break that up into:

version: 3.3.0
Release: 0.1.test1

To do this you can have your tooling split on "." and then compare the last
field to strings that you use to designate pre-releases.  When you get
matches, make the Release field for the rpm start with 0.1 (as opposed to 1
for regular releases) and append "." followed by the pre-release string.

>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Archive:Tools/RPM/VersionComparison
>  
>  and in any case, 3.3.0-test1 > 3.3.0, while 3.3.0 = 3.3.0, so in no case
>  can I see how to make a version that is < 3.3.0
>   
For the majority of tools out there, 3.3.0~test1 > 3.3.0 as well.  That's
why the advice is to set the Version field to the base version in the rpm
spec file (3.3.0) and use the Release: field to ensure proper ordering for
pre-releases.

>  
>  > The tilde doesn't designate that general sorting algorithms will place the
>  > filename before the base version in the general tools case.  It is only
>  > special tools that recognize that usage.
>  
>  Will the tools rpm and maybe yum behave the same way as dpkg does with
>  tildes, at least on a very recent install such as F18 or F19?
>   
On Fedora 19 (I don't have F18 to check right now), rpm implements something
compatible with dpkg.  yum inherits the rpm vercmp so it should handle it
too.  Other tooling which doesn't use rpmvercmp directly won't.

>  http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/footnotes.html#f37
>  
>  One of my aims with these tarballs is to verify that the final release
>  will work smoothly with a wide range of packaging tools.
>   
If you want it to work with a wide range of packaging tools then you should
be using the Version + Release strategy to do pre-releases.  Otherwise you
will only work with newer versions of rpm; all current RHEL and other
derivatives, Fedora 17, OpenSuSE-12.2 and earlier, etc.


-Toshio