Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Making microbranches popular

[Mirian Crzig Lennox]

I seem to recall that a few months ago, there was some discussion
about relaxing the restriction on branch names (or alternatively to
create some kind of alias mechanism for more free-form names).  Is
that still under consideration?

It would be useful for tracking non-Arch software packages, since
project maintainers seem to stay up nights devising incomprehensible
schemes for version numbers.  Rather than attempt to crowbar them into
some sort of sanity, I'd like to be able to import every upstream
release or snapshot into its own branch, and reserve the version
numbers for my own use.  So, for example ntop, the network top utility
which is currently at version 2.2c, could be imported as
ntop--release-2.2c--0 rather than some kludge like
ntop--release--2.2.3.  This would also have the important effect of
preventing me banging my head against the wall if an actual version
2.2.3 decides to be released in future.  (I swear people do this sort
of thing simply to annoy package maintainers!)

Even if the above weren't possible for technical or moral reasons,
simply having a way to map more-or-less arbitrary sequences of
characters onto the standard arch category-branch-version-revision
structure would be a delightful benefit.

--Mirian