Re: Can we find a better idiom for unversioned packages?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Xinglu Chen <public@yoctocell.xyz> skribis:

> Well, seeing
>
>   foo-1.0.0-1.2021-01-31
>
> gives a user more useful information than something like
>
>   foo-1.0.0-1.cabba9e
>
> With the former, I can quickly see that the version is from 2021-01-31,
> whereas with the latter, I would have to either find the VCS repo online
> or go to my local checkout of it and browse the logs.

I agree with Leo here.  IMO what matters with version strings is that
they be comparable: users (and UIs) should be able to tell which string
denotes a newer version.  That’s exactly what the ‘revision’ bit does in
the example above.  The commit shorthand is an additional bit to
uniquely identify the snapshot.

Knowing the date of a release, or that of a commit, may also be useful,
but that’s not what version strings are about generally.

Thanks,
Ludo’.