Build id vs Version number in Synaptic

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 15:31:21 -0500, Jim wrote:
>Why do some packages use a build id to show the latest version and 
>others seem to use a version number?  For example Libreoffice Calc
>shows a build id while Firefox shows a version number.
>
>This sometimes makes it difficult to determine how current a package
>in a repository is when comparing it to a version of a program you may
>have seen on the net.

Hi,

https://www.google.de/search?q=ubuntu+package+versioning

leads to e.g.

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man5/deb-version.5.html

It's not clear to me what you are actually asking regarding

libreoffice-calc (1:5.1.6~rc2-0ubuntu1~xenial2)
https://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial-updates/libreoffice-calc

firefox (56.0+build6-0ubuntu0.14.04.2 and others)
https://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty-updates/firefox

?

You could use google to get information about special details and
general versoning schemes, also consider to read Wiki pages, e.g.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_versioning#Designating_development_stage

FWIW sometimes the versioning needs to be detailed, because versioning
done by upstream leads to misunderstandings, especially if building an
unreleased version from git necessarily is required, e.g.

[root at moonstudio ~]# jackd --version | head -1
jackdmp 1.9.11
[root at moonstudio ~]# apt list jackd2 2>/dev/null | tail -1
jackd2/xenial,now 1.9.10+20150825git1ed50c92~dfsg-1ubuntu1 amd64 [installed]

Sometimes upstream doesn't provide a version at all, so the only
landmark is the date.

Regards,
Ralf