[gnutls-help] Guile-Gnutls bindings to separate git repo?

[Andreas Metzler]

On 2022-10-10 Simon Josefsson <simon at josefsson.org> wrote:
> Andreas Metzler <ametzler at bebt.de> writes:
[...]
> > We my Debian hat on: Pretty pretty please use a version number > 3.7.8
> > to allow a simple upgrade from guile-gnutls 3.7.8 to the new separate
> > version. (Instead of requiring fiddling and ugliness with empty
> > transition packages or epoch.)
[...]
> > Restarting version also imho does not make sense: Afaiui the next
> > guile-gnutls will not be something totaly new but essentially 3.7.8
> > with a changed README. The version number should reflect that. Or do you
> > envision a rename, too?

Hello Simon,

let me elaborate a little bit, to make things clearer.

> There has never been a source package 'guile-gnutls' before, so what
> version we use should not matter.

Not for the source-version but ...

>  If it makes Debian packaging upgrades
> easier for the _binary_ guile-gnutls package if we start on 3.7.8, that
> seems like a weak but sufficient argument for doing it (unless there is
> any arguments against using 3.7.8, which I don't see currently).

... the binary packages which are actually installed on a user's system
and which the package manager (yum, apt, ...) deals with and considers
for upgrades usually inherit the version number from the source package.
And yum looks at the binary package version number and will not
"upgrade" from gnutls-guile 3.7.7-1.fc37 to gnutls-guile 0.0.1.

This is a not Debian-specific issue, every distribution that deals with
binary packages (Gentoo might do better, I do not know) would need to
take additional (ugly) work to force the transition if
guile-gnutls-separate used a version-number lower than the last binary
built from gnutls-combined.

Thanks for considering this.

cu Andreas
-- 
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