On 2017-04-24 10:43, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:
In our software build and install scripts we check for the openSUSE version. We use the information in /etc/os-release. When openSUSE went from 13.3 to 42.1, it was no logical issue because the version number increased. So simple tests of > or < still worked. The first big issue we had was with Tumbleweed, which uses the date of release as the version. It resulted in us having to track Tumbleweed things one way, and openSUSE/Leap another way. Nonetheless, within each version numbering system, the version numbers increased.
Is there another package or distribution that has used an occasionally decreasing version number? An example of Red Hat was given. But they changed the product name at the same time. They did not decrease the number of a product that had the same name. I would imagine that a version of 15 might make some sort of sense if Leap is dropped.
Perhaps it is time to disassociate the distribution name (which may or may not include a number) from the software release version. Microsoft have had this for a long time. The '10' in Windows 10 is not used at the code/packaging level to describe/detect the software version.
You could renumber 42 as 14 or as a date string, similar to Tumbleweed. Using date string internally would be safer for the future. But you'd have to backport the change to 42.x Otherwise, I would suggest to post the code to do version detection correctly in the same place where versions are listed, or externals will refuse to contemplate openSUSE in their packages. Just an opinion/guess. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar)