[maemo-developers] The issue of version strings

[From: Aniello Del Sorbo]

2009/11/6 Anderson Lizardo <anderson.lizardo at openbossa.org>:
> On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 8:18 PM, Aniello Del Sorbo <anidel at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Few people complained that Xournal 0.4.2.1-1fremantle13 was too long.
>> I will make a diablo version as well (0.4.2.1-1diablo3).
>>
>> It's not my fault if Fremantle is a long name :P
>> Anyway, suggestions?
>>
>> Bear in mind that 0.4.2.1-1fremantle13 is now in Extras, changing it
>> will make it a new package?
>
> I personally think that the length of version strings should not be QA
> or "user friendliness" issue at all. Ideally, I think the application
> manager should handle long version strings by itself. One idea is to
> truncate the middle of a long string with "...", like several
> applications do to e.g. URLs. Some heuristic could be added that
> splits into common separators, such as +-~:
>
> 2.0.0+cvs20040908+mp4v2+bmp-0ubuntu6maemo1 -> 2.0.0+...-0ubuntu6maemo1
>
> (although I think that in this case "ubuntu6" should be removed from
> the version string, given that the previous debian/changelog entries
> will take care of documenting the upstream vendor versions.)
>
> And if strings like "0.4.2.1-1fremantle13", begin to become too long
> for the UI to display properly, I think we might have a problem with
> the application manager and not with the strings :)
>
> Just my two cents,
> --
> Anderson Lizardo
> OpenBossa Labs - INdT
> Manaus - Brazil
>

The issue had more to do with that version appearing on Maemo.org
Downloads than on the AM.
Indeed it looks awful and I'd love to have a shorter version ON that web page.

But if I change it by editing the Maemo.org page, it reverts back to
the one in the package.

I.e. I'd like to have my app version be shorter "0.4.2.1-<minor>" AND
the 'package version' as
it is now "0.4.2.1-1fremantle13".

Is that possible at all?

Thanks for your 2 cents :)


-- 
anidel