Dear devs,

In https://lists.linaro.org/pipermail/linaro-dev/2016-April/018161.html (sorry, I can't reply to that thread directly, as I've only just subscribed to the list), there was a patch to remove the -2' from PR to fix the following error from the do_package_rpm script:

| error: line 4: invalid tag value("^[A-Za-z0-9+._]+$") Release: Release: r2015.11-2 | error: Package has no %description: libgcc-linaro+5.2.aarch64

This was NACKed by Koen Kooi because it "winds back the release, which is bad and breaks upgrade paths, which is worse". Good points. (Some package version comparison algorithms would treat "r2015.11-2" as a lower version number than "r2015.11", but others would treat it as a higher version number. Package managers often have to massage upstream version numbers in obnoxious ways to fit into the package manager's version numbering rules.)

Is there a recommended resolution for this problem or any plans to fix it? In my own case, I worked around it locally by adding the following line to meta-linaro-toolchain/recipes-devtools/gcc/gcc-linaro-5.2.inc after the setting of the PR variable:

PKGR = "${@'${PR}'.replace('-', '+')}"

The effect is to replace '-' with '+' in the RPM package versions. I'm not sure what effect that has on the upgrade path though. Would replacing the '-' with a '.' or a '_' be better?

Best regards, Ian Abbott