Re: The pkgsrc-2008Q3 Branch

[Havard Eidnes <he%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

> I know I'm really annoying but problem with packages downgrades is
> still not resolved.
>
> 2008Q2 vs 2008Q3
>
> > converters/p5-Convert-UUlib p5-Convert-UUlib 1.080 1.11
> > time/p5-Data-ICal-DateTime p5-Data-ICal-DateTime 0.65 0.7
> > time/p5-DateTime-Locale p5-DateTime-Locale 0.4001nb1 0.41
> > www/p5-HTML-LinkExtractor p5-HTML-LinkExtractor 0.121nb2 0.13

These are all perl packages.  I suspect I may be at least partly
to blame.

However...  This is a result of a culture clash between some
parts of the perl community's conventions for numbering perl
packages, and the pkgsrc version numbering conventions.

I've been told (this may not be accurate?) that a perl $VERSION
with x.y.z format will be incorrectly interpreted (by perl?).
This is what gives rise to sequences similar to 1.1 -> 1.1001 ->
1.2 which can sometimes be found in certain perl packages.  If
we're to strictly adhere to the pkgsrc numbering conventions, 1.2
should probably be 1.2000, or 1.1001 should have been 1.1.1 in
pkgsrc.

However, if we decide that we strictly must adhere to our own
conventions for package version numbering, doing direct and
accurate comparisons between perl/CPAN module version number
strings and pkgsrc package version strings will become
essentially impossible in those cases where we provide the
required "padding" when creating the pkgsrc version number.

So... what's the correct thing to do?

Regards,

- Håvard