Deb version numbering is misleading

Bug #2007702 reported by Nathan Teodosio
8
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
chromium-browser (Ubuntu)
Fix Committed
Low
Nathan Teodosio

Bug Description

For Ubuntu >= Focal the transitional debs are frozen at the version number 1:85...

This might make one think[1][2] that it will install a critically outdated Chromium while it does not, because it installs the snap.

[1] https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+question/702591
[2] https://askubuntu.com/q/1420925

Tags: patch
description: updated
Revision history for this message
Nathan Teodosio (nteodosio) wrote :

I'm proposing changing the version number from 1:85.0.4183.83-0ubuntu3 to 2:1+snap, similar to what Firefox does.

description: updated
Revision history for this message
Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton) wrote :

The attachment "chromium.diff" seems to be a debdiff. The ubuntu-sponsors team has been subscribed to the bug report so that they can review and hopefully sponsor the debdiff. If the attachment isn't a patch, please remove the "patch" flag from the attachment, remove the "patch" tag, and if you are member of the ~ubuntu-sponsors, unsubscribe the team.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by ~brian-murray, for any issue please contact him.]

tags: added: patch
Revision history for this message
Lukas Märdian (slyon) wrote :

Thank you for this suggestion.
Even though bumping the epoch is a very big hammer, it sounds very sensible to me.
The patch is looking mostly good, too.

But I wonder if we should rather change the version number to "2:1snap1-0ubuntu1", in order to use a similar format as we have on Firefox (LP: #1892724)? What do you think?

Revision history for this message
Nathan Teodosio (nteodosio) wrote : Re: [Bug 2007702] Re: Deb version numbering is misleading

Hi Lukas, thanks for having a look!

> But I wonder if we should rather change the version number to
> "2:1snap1-0ubuntu1", in order to use a similar format as we have on
> Firefox (LP: #1892724)? What do you think?

So, my hunch reaction to that scheme is "god, are all those numbers
really meaningful and necessary?" Being this is a package that installs
a snap, with all the upstream and almost all downstream changes handled
in the snap, I couldn't think in a way we would benefit from more than
one "free" (i.e., not epoch) number, and that is why I suggested a
simpler scheme — just for the principle of parcimony's sake.

Now, there can definitely be shortsight from my side, as I'm usually
only bumping version numbers, not reworking or creating them. At any
rate, both schemes solve the problem of misleading users, and I'm glad
to change to either.

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

One argument for having 'ubuntu' in the version usually is that it will prevent the autosync job to override the revision (in case Debian would also bump their epoch to 2 and have a version higher) but having the package added to the sync blocklist would achieve the same result. Either way seems fine to me, it's just a deb version which is something most users will not ever notice or care about (the current thunderbird SRU version In lunar for example is 1:115.3.1+build1-0ubuntu0.23.04.1... ;-)

Revision history for this message
Nathan Teodosio (nteodosio) wrote :

Thanks for the background, let's use 2:1snap1-0ubuntu1 then.

Revision history for this message
Jeremy Bícha (jbicha) wrote :

I have uploaded this and unsubscribed ubuntu-sponsors. Please feel free to resubscribe if you have anything else that needs to be sponsored.

Changed in chromium-browser (Ubuntu):
status: Triaged → Fix Committed
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