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Revision as of 20:57, 10 February 2009 by Lkundrak (talk | contribs) (Eopch draft)
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Changelog

  • 2009-02-10, 0.01: first shot --Lkundrak 20:57, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Existing Guideline

No guideline that would limit the use of Epochs exists.

Proposal

Following change to Packaging Guidelines is proposed: Add a section Use of Epochs which would read:

  • If a package to be imported is or previously was present in either privately or publicly accessible repository and there is a chance that an older version of the package is present in any number of Fedora installations, packager can optionally include an Epoch tag equal to one of most recent version of the original package. In case Epoch tag is not present in the original package, packager can include Epoch under the same circumstances under which he would include the Epoch tag in the Fedora package such as the change of the versioning scheme.
  • Packager can choose to drop the Epoch when importing the package, however he is encouraged to apply common sense and support smooth transition from third party repositories.
  • In case the package is original work in Fedora, package MUST NOT use Epoch tag in SPEC file.

Motivations

Use of Epochs has been controversial and das been source of number of (sometimes unnecessarily harsh) disputes. [1] It generates unnecessary mailing list traffic so is better cleaned up :)

Existing practice

This guideline is consistent with existing packages, and since it is only relevant to new packages to be imported it doesn't involve any changes to already imported packages.

Discussion

See Talk:PackagingDrafts/E for discussion.