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

[Peter FELECAN]

James Lee <james at opencsw.org> writes:

> 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.

Thank you Master James and following your precious counsel. I fully
understood the scheme that you mentioned and the smallness of iota is
international, at least for those of indo-european culture. However your
explanation is better than the initial haiku.
-- 
Peter