Incidentally, Debian has worked out a pretty workable versioning scheme.

Martin Wirblat <sql.mawi at t-link.de> wrote:
> After re-thinking the idea with the build number, I guess it is better 
> to have SqueakMap just checking if versionNumber conforms to some 
> standard format as in n.xy ( e.g. 1.01 ). 

Yeah, that's what Debian does, with the addition that you can use
alphanumerics as well (a, b, c, ...).  The portions of the string are
divided roughly by whenever you switch from numeric to non-numeric and
back.  So the above would turn into:

	1   .   01


You can also do 1.01a, which would tokenize into:

        1   .   01   a


Components are compared from left to right, just as you'd expect.



> This way the author can decide to indicate that the package is 
> immature ( e.g. 0.01 ) and it is possible to differentiate for us 
> humans between major versions and it is easier to describe a special 
> prerequisite demand ( e.g. major version >= 1 but < 3 ). 

Once you have defined version comparison precisely, you can write things
like:

   (foo >= 1)  and (foo < 3)



> >Perhaps we can have something like packageName+buildNumber where 
> >buildNumber is generated by SqueakMap and starts with and is 
> >incremented by 1 to have even more KISS.

Why would SM want to "rebuild" a package?  When would this increment
happen?



Lex