Re: [gentoo-dev] Request to add ~> atom prefix operator on Portage.

[konsolebox]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 2:07 AM, Paweł Hajdan, Jr.
<phajdan.jr@g.o> wrote:
> On 9/14/15 9:13 AM, konsolebox wrote:
>> On Mon, Sep 14, 2015 at 2:29 PM, Paweł Hajdan, Jr.
>> <phajdan.jr@g.o> wrote:
>>> On 9/14/15 6:35 AM, konsolebox wrote:
>>>> Many times we need to match packages like this:
>>>> something-1.0.2a.*
>>>
>>> Could you give specific examples, i.e. what packages, what
>>> dependencies, why is that needed?
>>
>> For accuracy and peace of mind regardless of how often conflicts
>> could happen.
>
> I agree =pkg-4.1* also matching pkg-4.10 is a concern.
>
> In that case though, it would change the focus of the discussion to how
> * operator should work, not necessarily adding a new ~> operator.

Here are my issues if we try to modify =* and not add another operator:

1) We'll completely abandon having an operator that matches the
remaining parts of a version number for good: =cat/foo-5.2015* would
no longer work.

2) We'll have to decide if we should remove the leading zeros of a
version number: should 5.01.0 and and 5.1.2 be the matched the same if
I used =5.01*?  We can only either allow it or not.  We keep one
feature, we lose the other feature.  If we use another operator,
=5.01* could just stay strict on matching 5.01*, whereas the operator
could have the function of treating them like decimals instead.  We
can keep =* have the string matching feature while have another
operator do the more-on-arithmetic one.