Alternatives to version numbering

[Toby Corkindale]

On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 12:26:32AM +0000, David Cantrell wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 10:54:13AM +1100, Toby Corkindale wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 04:54:51PM +0100, Abigail wrote:
> > > > What if you have a module that you want to use, and it says it requires Perl
> > > > 5.8.8 - but you have Perl 5.8.1 with vendor patches on your system - maybe it
> > > > includes the fixes or functionality the module author wants? 
> > I was just wondering about the case in the real world where we're seeing
> > vendors provide all sorts of specific patches to things though..
> 
> The correct solution is to avoid vendor patches.  Experience shows that
> they are usually broken.

That's my advice too!

Unfortunately the people I contract to sometimes respond with "But our
sysadmins say we can only use the vendor supplied versions".

Which sucks.

However, if I want them to pay me all their earth monies, I'll do it. Probably
more by fudging versions, but still..

But this is tracking away from the aspect I was thinking of, ie. distributed
development models.