Understanding the numbers in package names (?OT)

[Andy Rabagliati]

On Tue, 12 Sep 2006, Mart??n van de Streek wrote:

> > 4. In kgpg_4%3a3.5.2-0ubuntu8_i386.deb,
> > dnsutils_1%253a9.3.2-2ubuntu1.1_i386.deb,
> > xserver-xorg-core_1%253a1.0.2-0ubuntu10.4_i386.deb etc, some special
> > characters are added and numbers placed before them. Also, the numbers
> > after ubuntu here (8 and 1.1) are confusing.
> 
> %3a is a colon (:) in ASCII. The colon signifies a 'package epoch'. You
> can find out more about this in the Debian Policy, under 5.6.12 

I continually battle with packages with %3a in them.

They appear in /var/cache/apt/archives with %3a, but if I want them to
be usable on a CD or website, they need to be renamed with :

apt-move refuses to move them.

Cheers,    Andy!