epochs

[markd at macports.org]

I was refining the guide part about epochs, and after gleaning information
from the FreeBSD ports collection documentation I followed their lead and
wrote the final part below for our guide.  But do we consider this a good
practice?  Or is it only a FreeBSD thing?


"An epoch is not needed for most ports, and good use of a port's version
can make using an epoch unnecessary even for application distributions
without official version numbers. For example, if an application version
1.5 is superseded by a snapshot release 20081022, the new release could be
given version number 1.5.20081022, rather than 20081022, so the newer
release will have a numericaly greater value."

Mark