make force-tag gone

[Paul Howarth]

Jerry James wrote:
> On 2008/9/14 Todd Zullinger <tmz at pobox.com> wrote:
>> I'm not arguing in favor of force-tag removal.  However, bumping the
>> release number like this is pretty much required if you have to
>> rebuild a package in an older branch, which can happen for various
>> reasons.  I don't see what's ugly or kludgy about ensuring that the
>> n-v-r remains less than what is in the devel branch.
> 
> I've wondered for awhile now why Fedora uses such a complex versioning
> scheme.  The upstream version numbers should be informative, not
> normative.  The right way to do it is to have a three part version
> number: [distribution version number]-[# of builds for this
> distribution number]-[upstream version number], where the last part is
> for the user's information only; i.e., it does not play into version
> number comparisons.  This lets you deal with rolling back to a
> previous upstream release without needing Epochs.  It lets you fix a
> problem that manifests in one distribution version only without having
> to touch the others.  You NEVER have upgrade problems because the
> distribution version number is the most significant part.  It lets you
> give upstream's exact version number, even if it contains hyphens (a
> problem I've had to deal with twice now).  It makes everything so much
> simpler.  Not that it isn't way too late now to change, but how did we
> wind up with all this unnecessary complexity?
> 
> This wasn't directed at you, Todd.  The thread just made me think of it again.

It would also mean that every package would have to be rebuilt for every 
distribution release (to pick up the new distribution version number), 
something that's not had to happen for a while now with the existing scheme.

Paul.