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Date:      Fri, 08 Jul 2005 20:39:42 -0700
From:      Ade Lovett <ade@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Michael Nottebrock <lofi@freebsd.org>
Cc:        freebsd-ports@freebsd.org
Subject:   PORTEPOCH (was Re: lang/gcc33: snapshots -> final release)
Message-ID:  <42CF46FE.2050304@FreeBSD.org>
In-Reply-To: <200507090145.00506.lofi@freebsd.org>
References:  <Pine.BSF.4.62.0507082349240.14905@pulcherrima.dbai.tuwien.ac.at>	<Pine.BSF.4.62.0507090003340.14905@pulcherrima.dbai.tuwien.ac.at>	<1120861640.91809.15.camel@hood.oook.cz> <200507090145.00506.lofi@freebsd.org>

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Michael Nottebrock wrote:
> I really wonder why everybody is so afraid of PORTEPOCH and tries to work 
> around it 

Well, from my perspective, PORTEPOCH is something of a kludge in that
once created, it can never be removed, only increased whenever there's
an "oops" of any kind with the versioning of the port (mainly down to
less than stellar version handling by the actual source, though this
particular case is somewhat different).

The number of ports with the ugly (to my mind) ",<number>" at the end
can only therefore ever increase, so that character string is somehow a
nagging sensation in the back of my head about such mistakes.

Compare PORTEPOCH with PORTREVISION for example, when extra patches or
other circumstances require a minor bump for port dependency chaining,
but without actually having a new distfile.  As and when a newer version
of the relevant source becomes available, PORTREVISION is removed (or
set to 0), and the extra "_<number>" tag vanishes into dim and distant
memory.

It's certainly an issue of perception, rather than a solid, valid,
technical argument against it, though the irreversibility of PORTEPOCH
is something that is less than desirable.

And no, I don't have a solution.  Still trying to write up an automated
patch bot to sweep the tree for impending USE_AUTOTOOLS conversion after
6.0-RELEASE is out the door :)

-aDe



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