[csw-maintainers] [policy] Re: feature patching, and naming

[Ben Walton]

Excerpts from Philip Brown's message of Sat Feb 05 17:21:35 -0500 2011:

> Works for me. Although we should probably make some other
> recommendations in the writeup such as:
>  - keep the optional field as short as possible.
>  - it is preferred to NOT be present, unless neccessary
>  - current neccessary uses are:  ",p", which denotes a feature patch

Ok, so it's treated as a 'flag' instead of a value.  That works for
me.

> applied by the maintainer. See README for details. Other uses should
> be discussed on the maintainers list.
>   .. oh I guess we can formalise also, ",sparconly"  and ",i386only"

Just for clarification, are you saying that a you'd see:

1.2.3,p,sparconly,REV=YYYY.MM.DD

I presume so, as the alternate isn't very nice:

1.2.3,psparconly,REV=...

A third option is to have only one additional field between upstream
version info and REV= that contains single letter sets like:

1.2.3,pi,REV=YYYY.MM.DD

where ,pi indicates that it carries a feature patch and is i386only.
This would require standardizing the use of letters in this field.

> Lets avoid people creating
> 1.2.3,ithinkthisisokaybuttryitandletmeknowmkay,REV=YYYY.MM.DD

Agreed.

Thanks
-Ben
--
Ben Walton
Systems Programmer - CHASS
University of Toronto
C:416.407.5610 | W:416.978.4302