[Bash-completion-devel] Roadmap proposal

[Mike Kelly]

On Sun, 15 Feb 2009 10:27:48 +0100
David Paleino <d.paleino at gmail.com> wrote:

> > dunno about other package formats but I suppose they have similar
> > mechanisms. I have no problem with that, it's obviously doable,
> > just thought I'd mention it in case someone didn't think of it.
> 
> I already thought at that. Do other distributions have mechanisms to
> handle this? RPM is ok, Deb is ok -- what about Gentoo's/Exherbo's
> ebuilds?

We don't really have the same sort of mechanism -- we tend to try to
have our package versions match the upstream version as much as
possible.

I think the way this was handled in Gentoo, when Wine made the same
transition from date-based releases to numbered ones, was to do what is
called a 'package.mask' at some point, basically telling users' package
managers the the old, date-based versions are no longer suitable for
use -- they would then simply see the new numbered version ones as best
available version, and install them instead.

So, it's doable, just a bit icky. There might be a slightly cleaner way
to handle this, but I'm unsure of it right now.

-- 
Mike Kelly