On 11 Jan, 2008, at 22:22, markd@macports.org wrote:
That's actually a bit of a mess and might deserve its own topic of discussion. For now, I think it should be stated that an epoch cannot be removed; this is the only case in which we can currently guarantee consistent behavior.
At the same time, we should change MacPorts' behavior to be consistent. I think the method from port(1) is better than the one from macports.tcl, since it's the only one in which we can guarantee upgrades correctly--even if it does force an extra line of cruft to hang around in Portfiles with epochs (all 20 of 'em!)
I changed the text to this based on what you said about current behavior. Let me know if it needs adjusting.
---------- An epoch is not needed for most ports. If an epoch is used it must never be decreased or removed even when a port's version is updated; this would cause port version comparisons to be incorrect since epochs take precedence over versions once epochs have been used. ----------
That sounds right for the current behavior. Maybe once others weigh in (or don't) we can have a consistent behavior to base the description off of, though. Chris