[csw-maintainers] reminder about versioning, numbering, etc. The IPS factor.

[James Lee]

On 21/12/10, 15:56:33, Peter FELECAN <pfelecan at opencsw.org> wrote regarding
Re: [csw-maintainers] reminder about versioning, numbering, etc. The IPS
factor.:

> > foobar-2010.12.21,REV=alpha.beta.gamma.I.dont.care.an.iota-

> what do you mean by that? too much snow, not enough play?

Oh Peter, do defrost your brain.  The number on the left, looks like
a date, right?  It is a date.  The date normally goes to the right
but I've put it on the left so it gets parsed first by a "big endian"
ordering algorithm.  What normally goes on the left, the version, I've
put on the right where it can use non numeric description and retain
perfect correspondence with the actual version (something we discussed
on the CSW releng list, 2005-06-23 and was the reason we adopted the
REV= part as the ultimate arbiter of newness).  My example uses Latin
characters and English spelling to describe letters of the Greek
alphabet - alpha, beta, gamma, passing iota and ending at omega -
which are sometimes actually used in software versions.  Even for this
well defined sequence a machine has little chance of ordering correctly
and IPS declares it won't try, which matters not if the date is put
first - if you are foreign you might need to look up what to "not care
an iota" means.




James.