Subject: Versioning in the launchpad ppa

From: Jens Reyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2018 14:26:41 +0100

Package: launchpad.net

Hi,

the version of e.g. nx-libs in the X2Go nightly PPA at
https://launchpad.net/~x2go is technically lower than the one in the
official Ubuntu Bionic (18.04) archive:

$ dpkg --compare-versions 2:3.5.99.16-0~201811100633~ubuntu18.04.1 gt
2:3.5.99.16-1 && echo "ppa version is bigger" || echo "ppa version is
smaller"
ppa version is smaller

This would be correct if they had the same "upstream" content, so that
the official package has precedence over the PPA one. However I assume
that the nightly PPA ships newer "upstream" functionality. You may
reflect this by changing the versioning to something like this
(increase the upstream versioning part before the Debian revision -0):

2:3.5.99.16+201811100633-0~ubuntu18.04.1

$ dpkg --compare-versions 2:3.5.99.16+201811100633-0~ubuntu18.04.1 gt
2:3.5.99.16-1 && echo "ppa version is bigger" || echo "ppa version is
smaller"
ppa version is bigger

Otherwise I have to "downgrade" the packages, in order to use the
nightly builds instead of the older official Ubuntu bionic ones. For
this to work I currently use apt pinning:

$ cat /etc/apt/preferences.d/x2go-ppa
Package: *
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-x2go
Pin-Priority: 1010

Thanks
jre