Should PPAs be forced to specify a ~ppa1 or similar in the package version?

[Max Bowsher]

On 02/04/11 14:56, Scott Ritchie wrote:
> This has long been "good practice" for a variety of reasons
> 
> 1) Independent PPA packages of new upstream versions can be
> automatically replaced when a proper distro update occurs.
> 2) If the PPA package itself gets promoted to the archive, it can be
> replaced by just dropping the ~ppa
> 3) It makes the version string more meaningful, as it prevents the
> possibility of an official and PPA package having the same version
> 4) If you are branching foo-0ubuntu1 and need multiple iterations you
> now have a proper number to increment without implying you've rebased
> off foo-0ubuntu2.
> 
> Making such a change would have other value:
> 
> 1) It makes it much easier to detect nonstandard packages on a system.
> This can be done with automated tools too without fear of false
> positives (in bug reports, with apport, with update manager, etc)
> 2) If all PPA packages were so branded, it would be much easier to
> implement a "remove all PPA packages" type of feature.
> 
> 
> Thoughts?

No, please no, this would be incredibly annoying?

I pretty much agree with all the points in your "good practice" list,
but the strict string "~ppa(number)" isn't the only way to satisfy them,
and there are those of us out there who do understand Debian versioning
and can pick reasonable strings ourselves.

Whilst I think the widespread promotion of "~ppa1" has overall been a
good thing, it has led to one negative effect - people who don't truly
understand why it works seem to view "~" as a generic separator
character rather than understanding its true meaning.

In regards to your "other value" points, it really should not be that
hard to implement those features in a more elegant and ultimately more
useful way based on APT package lists and Origin metadata, rather than
hacking it via substring matching on version strings.


That said, I can totally see that it could be a good thing to implement
a safety net in Launchpad which denies the ability to upload version
strings that "look like" primary archive versions, unless the PPA owner
clicks through an "I know what I am doing" questionnaire.

Max.

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