Hi, The Wanderer wrote: > an epoch as high as 9: > ii wodim > 9:1.1.11-3.2
Looks like interesting history. https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/c/cdrkit/changelog-91.1.11-3.2 (when read backwards) shows repeated occasions of what https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#epochs-should-be-used-sparingly describes as: "Note that the purpose of epochs is [...] to allow us to leave behind serious mistakes." It began in the old cdrecord days obviously to override the peculiar upstream version numbering of cdrecord pre-releases: -- Christian Schwarz <schw...@debian.org> Tue, 16 Sep 1997 22:16:57 +0200 cdrecord (1.5a5-1) experimental; urgency=low ... -- Christian Schwarz <schw...@debian.org> Sun, 12 Oct 1997 21:59:11 +0200 cdrecord (1:1.5-1) unstable; urgency=low ... * Included epoch in version number. ... There might have been the intention to stay with a version format where chronological sequence and dpkg sorting are in sync. But then a new package maintainer took over and the letters got re-introduced. This became a sorting problem later: -- Erik Andersen <ander...@debian.org> Sat, 22 Jan 2000 12:40:27 -0700 cdrecord (1:1.8a40r3-1) frozen unstable; urgency=low ... -- Erik Andersen <ander...@debian.org> Mon, 21 Feb 2000 22:29:39 -0700 cdrecord (2:1.8a40-1) frozen unstable; urgency=low ... -- Erik Andersen <ander...@debian.org> Tue, 29 Feb 2000 10:02:15 -0700 cdrecord (3:1.8-1) frozen unstable; urgency=low ... -- Erik Andersen <ander...@debian.org> Sat, 29 Sep 2001 15:41:11 -0600 cdrtools (4:1.10-1) unstable; urgency=low For a while, the pre-release suffixes were avoided and the "source" version staid with the youngest release. When they came back, a "+" was inserted between the minor version number of the youngest released version and the current pre-release version: -- Eduard Bloch <bl...@debian.org> Fri, 6 Sep 2002 20:09:15 +0200 cdrtools (4:1.10+11a31-1) unstable; urgency=low The lower sorting rank of '+' in comparison to '-' solved the problem with the pre-release suffixes. Then came the big fork of cdrtools into cdrkit with new version numbers (and an even better separator for "pre1"): -- Eduard Bloch <bl...@debian.org> Mon, 4 Sep 2006 01:24:22 +0200 cdrkit (5:1.0~pre1-1) unstable; urgency=low This could have been the epoch to be used up to today. But then Knoppix was caught with having installed a cdrecord package with epoch 8. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=399995#32 So the current epoch became 9. -- Eduard Bloch <bl...@debian.org> Sat, 30 Dec 2006 16:45:31 +0100 cdrkit (9:1.1.0-1) unstable; urgency=low The Wanderer wrote: > I don't see any of 10 or above. None to be expected from cdrkit. The lack of further substantial development quite surely ended this dramedy. (I doubt that its final maintainer would be willing to change its epoch just to please people who installed a non-Debian package of it.) Have a nice day :) Thomas
