Bug#556295: r-cran-xtable: Replacement of dash by dot in version number confuses dpkg when third-party sources are listed.

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 18 November 2009 at 10:27, Andreas Tille wrote:
| On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 09:32:17PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
| > in r-cran-xtable, you eliminated the dash from the upstream version number.
| > This is an unnecessary precaution, that confuses dpkg when a third party
| > repository is used, typically cran2deb, as the original version number will
| > be seen as lower by dpkg even if the package is more recent.
| 
| I'm doing this systematically with all those CPAN packages which are
| featuring a dash in their version number.  What would be your suggestion
| to replace the dash safely?

To not do it -- Keep the CRAN version number as is with dashes or whatever it
contains, and just append the Debian revision.

That is what I (and I think most others) now do. You may need to wait for a
new 'bigger' upstream number (which in some cases 'never' comes) or use an
epoch (which I haven't done yet as I don't like using epochs unless I really
must).

| > If you agree but are busy with something else, I can commit or upload a
| > corrected version, with an epoch.
| 
| It is fine for me if you want to fix this package but there are more of
| them with the same problem and I wonder what might be the best general
| solution.  Dirk, could you comment on this please?

Well, I think I did :-) by replying to r-sig-debian with what Charles seems
to have forwarded.

The best general solution is to alter the process and to no longer do do a
substitution of dashes with dots.  If we had a Debian R Policy, this would
be in it.

Hth, Dirk

-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.