svn team mailing list archive

[Anders Kaseorg <andersk@xxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 5 May 2010, Michael Diers wrote:
> subversion (1.6.9dfsg-1ubuntu0~svn1~karmic1) karmic; urgency=low
> Preferences, anyone?

The difference between -XubuntuY~svn1 and -XubuntuYsvn1 is important, not 
just conventional, because -XubuntuY~svn1 is defined as earlier than the 
corresponding official package -XubuntuY, while -XubuntuYsvn1 is later.

The difference between -Xsvn1 and -X+svn1 is also important, because 
-Xsvn1 is less than the next official package -Xubuntu1, while -X+svn1 is 
later.  The difference between -XubuntuYsvn1 and -XubuntuY+svn1 is less 
important, but it is better to be consistent whether you’re patching -X 
packages or -XubuntuY packages.

Therefore, I recommend to add ~svn1 when you are backporting an official 
package to a previous distribution (or something analagous), so that the 
official package will supersede your package, and add svn1 with no 
delimeter when you are adding patches on top of an official package, so 
that your package will supersede the official package but the next 
official package will supersede yours.  For this special case I recommend 
-1ubuntu0svn1.

(If you want to play with the version comparison algorithm yourself, see 
dpkg --compare-versions in dpkg(1).)

Anders