[gentoo-dev] [RFC] Problems and limitations of the current version dependency specs

[Michał Górny]

Hello, everyone.

I would like to work on a major version depedencny specification
improvements as part of the next EAPI. For this reason, I'd like to
first gather some research on how developers are using the current
system, what they find efficient and what they find cumbersome.

Therefore, I would like to ask the following questions:

1. How often do you find '~' useful? Do you think there should be
additional operators that ignore revision part?

2. How often do you find '=...*' wildcard syntax useful? To what
purpose do you use it? Do you find its behavior confusing [1]?

3. Do you sometimes find yourself using '<'/'<=' specs that
accidentally match _pre/_rc/... versions?

4. What are the common tasks that you find unnecessarily complex /
lengthy with the current version specifications?

5. Do you find any other parts of the current version dependency
specifications confusing?

Please just list the problems and your feeling about the current system
now, not solutions. We will focus on the solutions in a next thread
once we determine what the problems are.

Thanks in advance for your input.


[1]. Few less-known facts about =...*:

a. it does NOT do string pattern matching but allows any version
components following (i.e. 1.1* does not match 1.11),

b. it matches any version components, including _pre/_p/_rc/...
suffixes (i.e. 1.1* matches 1.1_rc1).

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny
<http://dev.gentoo.org/~mgorny/>