Version name issue

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jan 24, 2008, at 17:00, Adam Dershowitz wrote:

> I currently have gimp-app gimp-app @2.4.0-rc1_0 installed.
> If I do a sync and then port info gimp-app it shows gimp-app  
> 2.4.0.  But if I do port outdated, this port does not show up as  
> outdated.  I would think that 2.4.0-rc1_0 is older then 2.4.0.  But  
> port seems to think that it is more current.  Is it just doing a  
> string compare to find the which one is newer?
> Am I correct about which one is in fact newer?

You're right that 2.4.0 is newer than 2.4.0-rc1. Unfortunately, the  
version comparison logic in MacPorts doesn't know this. It's not a  
simple string comparison -- it's the rpm-vercomp function -- but that  
function still doesn't know about release candidate version numbering  
(as far as I know).

You'll have to force the upgrade:

$ sudo port -ncuf upgrade gimp-app

I'm not sure why the port was ever updated to a release-candidate  
version; generally, that should not be done, since generally ports  
should only contain released versions, not release candidates, beta,  
alpha or other pre-release versions. (The exception to this are ports  
named *-devel; these are by definition supposed to contain release  
candidates, betas, alphas, or otherwise development versions. But  
we're talking about gimp-app, not gimp-app-devel (which doesn't exist  
anyway).)