[racket-dev] Packaging

I am aware of the external versions, but since I can't put them in a
require spec to identify the package I want, they aren't terribly
useful as an identifying feature of a package.

Carl Eastlund

On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 4:34 PM, Robby Findler
<robby at eecs.northwestern.edu> wrote:
> Thanks for clarifying. And I'm sure you must know about it and I'm a
> bit afraid to even bring it up, but you might want to use planet's
> external version feature.
>
> Robby
>
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Carl Eastlund <cce at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>> I am saying we should use something that is not called "version
>> number".  On the IRC list I have suggested -- without too much thought
>> behind it yet -- that we construct an "upgrade graph"; package
>> maintainers can specify which package can be thought of as an
>> automatic improvement on another, and some appropriate part of the
>> Planet mechanism can therefore follow a chain of these links to find
>> the best available candidate for a require.  That allows package
>> names, version numbers, and other string-based user-readable
>> package-identifying features to be uninterpreted, and written however
>> the maintainer wants.
>>
>> Carl Eastlund
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Robby Findler
>> <robby at eecs.northwestern.edu> wrote:
>>> Carl: your message is unclear to me. Are you saying that attempting to
>>> solve the problem of matching up require requests with available
>>> versions of software packages is hopeless and we shouldn't attempt it,
>>> or are you saying that we should use something that is not (literally)
>>> called "version number" or are you saying something else?
>>>
>>> Robby
>>>
>>> On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Carl Eastlund <cce at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>>>> Do you mean to inherit Planet's current "version number" semantics?
>>>> Ugggghhhhh.  Assigning a fixed structure and semantics to version
>>>> numbers was one of the worst things Planet did.  Dracula is up to
>>>> 8:18, and goodness knows what that means.  It does not mean there have
>>>> been 8 significantly different versions of Dracula, such that I gave
>>>> the release bigger fanfare than usual.  It means there were 8 times
>>>> when some potential incompatibility between releases occurred to me
>>>> between the time of package creation and the time of upload.  That
>>>> should not be how version numbers are determined.  It is not at all
>>>> clear to me that version numbers should serve as an automatic metric
>>>> of compatibility or upgrade-ability; let's either come up with a
>>>> metric that is more to the point, or stop trying so hard to enforce
>>>> things like "no compatibility regressions" that are often hard to
>>>> detect in the first place.
>>>>
>>>> Carl Eastlund
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 3:37 PM, Jay McCarthy <jay.mccarthy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> I don't feel strongly about this and you seem to, so supposing we
>>>>> support any conflicting installations, it makes sense for Planet 2.0
>>>>> to have both major and minor versions.
>>>>>
>>>>> Jay
>>>>>
>>>>> 2011/2/19 Robby Findler <robby at eecs.northwestern.edu>:
>>>>>> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 10:18 AM, Robby Findler
>>>>>> <robby at eecs.northwestern.edu> wrote:
>>>>>>> It looks to me like you there is relevant, important metadata that
>>>>>>> you're making someone fold into an implicit place instead of an
>>>>>>> explicit one.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Will you have a convention for these? What if I decide to call mine
>>>>>>> "libgtk2.0" and someone else calls theirs "somepackage-2"? That
>>>>>>> doesn't seem good fo
>>>>>>
>>>>>> [ Sorry; got distracted here and forgot to come back. ]
>>>>>>
>>>>>> That doesn't seem good for users who are trying to find packages.
>>>>>> Especially if I were to call mine "2-somepackage" (you may think this
>>>>>> far fetched, but if you look you should find an example of this in our
>>>>>> current collection tree....)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Robby
>>
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