[Pkg-mailman-hackers] Bug#366438: epoch of 0 causes apt to want to install mailman over and over

[Joey Hess]

Package: mailman
Version: 2.1.8-1
Severity: important

Every time anyone runing mailman in unstable upgraes with apt, it
"upgrades" mailman again and again, because it is confused by your
use of the 0: epoch in the package version number. Quoting the first
user to report this, Dave Carrigan:

> I'm not sure if this is a problem with mailman or dpkg, but apt continually 
> wants to upgrade mailman, even though I'm at the most recent version:
>
> # apt-get -s upgrade
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree... Done
> The following packages will be upgraded:
>   mailman
> 1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
> Inst mailman [2.1.8-1] (0:2.1.8-1 Debian:unstable)
> Conf mailman (0:2.1.8-1 Debian:unstable)
> # apt-cache policy mailman
> mailman:
>   Installed: 2.1.8-1
>   Candidate: 0:2.1.8-1
>   Version table:
>      0:2.1.8-1 0
>         500 http://debian-mirror.mirror.umn.edu unstable/main Packages
>      0:2.1.7-2.1.8rc1-1 0
>         500 http://debian-mirror.mirror.umn.edu testing/main Packages
>  *** 2.1.8-1 0
>         100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
>      2.1.5-8sarge2 0
>         500 http://debian-mirror.mirror.umn.edu stable/main Packages

I can reproduce the same problem here.

I've filed a bug on apt for being confused about the 0: epoch and not realizing
that the installed and available versions are the same. However, I don't
think we should wait on a fix to that bug to fix mailman. There's no reason
for mailman to be using an epoch at all, the previous version, "2.1.7+2.1.8rc1-1"
correctly compares less than the current version, "2.1.8-1". All the epoch
is doing is confusing apt. Policy has this to say:

     <epoch>
          This is a single (generally small) unsigned integer.  It may be
          omitted, in which case zero is assumed.  If it is omitted then
          the <upstream_version> may not contain any colons.

So your 0 epoch is unnecessary and is an edge case that is not handled by apt.
Please either remove it or switch to a normal epoch of 1.

(mailman is the only package in debian to use an explicit epoch of 0)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Kernel: Linux 2.4.27-2-686-smp
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages mailman depends on:
ii  adduser                       3.87       Add and remove users and groups
ii  apache2-mpm-prefork [httpd]   2.0.55-4   traditional model for Apache2
ii  cron                          3.0pl1-94  management of regular background p
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]         1.5.0      Debian configuration management sy
ii  libc6                         2.3.6-7    GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  logrotate                     3.7.1-3    Log rotation utility
ii  postfix [mail-transport-agent 2.2.10-1   A high-performance mail transport 
ii  pwgen                         2.05-1     Automatic Password generation
ii  python                        2.3.5-5    An interactive high-level object-o
ii  ucf                           2.0010     Update Configuration File: preserv

Versions of packages mailman recommends:
ii  base-passwd                   3.5.11     Debian base system master password

-- debconf information excluded

-- 
see shy jo