From dmurdoch@pair.com  Mon Oct 28 13:09:50 2002
From: dmurdoch@pair.com (Duncan Murdoch)
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 08:09:50 -0500
Subject: RFC: no automatic updates of packages with major version change
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.31.0210281124270.6985-100000@gannet.stats>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0210281107130.7939-100000@artemis> <Pine.LNX.4.31.0210281124270.6985-100000@gannet.stats>
Message-ID: <pvcqru8mhqodgt4gpks5p7qaksar88nifk@4ax.com>

On Mon, 28 Oct 2002 11:28:30 +0000 (GMT), you wrote:

>Now, we could throw the onus on the maintainers to add a
>
>BackwardsCompatible:FALSE
>
>flag to the DESCRIPTION file, if people really think that would be easier.

I think that approach would be better. A major version number change
is appropriate if I add a lot of functions to a package, even though
it may still be compatible with earlier releases.

But instead of "FALSE", I'd rather see the earliest compatible version
number listed.  For example, if 1.0, 2.0 and 2.1 are all compatible,
all versions could say

 BackwardsCompatibleTo:  1.0

If I had skipped upgrading to 2.0, I'd still know that 2.1 is
compatible with 1.0.  Similarly, if 2.0 was incompatible with 1.0,
this scheme would tell me that it was not safe to go directly from 1.0
to 2.1.

Duncan Murdoch

 
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RFC: no automatic updates of packages with major version change
Duncan Murdoch