port release candidate versioning question

[Christopher Chavez]

Sent: Monday, August 17, 2020 at 12:28 PM
From: "Ken Cunningham" <ken.cunningham.webuse at gmail.com>
To: "MacPorts Developers" <macports-dev at lists.macports.org>
Subject: port release candidate versioning question
> This sounds like a dumb question, that I should already know the answer to, but apparently I don’t seem to:
> I would like to make sure this works the way I think it works before I do it.
> When I make a new port clang-11 with version 11-rc1 and then follow-up with versions 11-rc2, 11-rc3, etc
> and then finally we have the release version 11.0.0
> will that all work properly as far as MacPorts goes?
> ie does macports see versions like this:
> 11.0.0 > 11-rc3 > 11-rc2 > 11-rc1 ?

There have been issues with RCs being lexicographically greater than the final release, but I will defer on saying what will happen for this example.

My own idea would be to set the version to the final release version now, and tweak the distfile name and increment the revision for each new RC or the final release, and avoid having to do anything unusual with setting ${version} altogether. The most likely problems I predict others perceive with this scheme is that there is something "wrong" about advertising the version as if it were the final release, "hiding" the fact it is prerelease; and that there is the hesitancy to make anything prerelease appear in a non-`-devel` port.

Christopher A. Chavez