[Development] Do we need version tags in released src packages?

[Albert Astals Cid]

El divendres, 13 d’agost de 2021, a les 11:06:07 (CEST), Jani Heikkinen va escriure:
> Hi,
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Edward Welbourne <edward.welbourne at qt.io>
> > Sent: perjantai 13. elokuuta 2021 10.43
> > To: Jani Heikkinen <jani.heikkinen at qt.io>
> > Cc: Albert Astals Cid <albert.astals.cid at kdab.com>; development at qt-
> > project.org
> > Subject: Re: [Development] Do we need version tags in released src
> > packages?
> > 
> > El divendres, 13 d’agost de 2021, a les 9:17:16 (CEST), Jani Heikkinen va
> > 
> > escriure:
> > >> We are planning to simplify our packaging and releasing scripts and
> > >> one thing which would simplify our scripts is removal of version tag
> > >> parsing for src (and example) packages. So the question is if we can
> > >> remove version tag (-alpha, -beta1 etc) from our src and exmple
> > 
> > packages?
> > 
> > Albert Astals Cid (13 August 2021 09:26) replied:
> > > Does this mean that alpha/beta packages would have exactly the same
> > > filename as the final packages?
> 
> That was my proposal

It seems a bad idea to have files with the same name and the different contents.

It can lead to all kind of confusion in which you download something, then "download the same file" 5 days later and it has a different shasum and you wonder if the mirror you downloaded something was hacked or if your computer is hacked or what happened.

Sure you can argue that the file is in a different parent folder, but for a link like 
   https://download.qt.io/official_releases/qt/6.1/6.1.2/submodules/qtcharts-everywhere-src-6.1.2.tar.xz
can you sincerely tell me you look at the full URL? 

I will look at the domain name to see it is not super fishy and at the filename, the internet has told us that the rest is just "internal storage" decisions by the people serving the file.

Cheers,
  Albert

> 
> > and, more generally, what would the practical consequences of your
> > proposed change be ?  What would Qt-users (or indeed anyone aside from
> > our packaging team) see changed ?
> > 
> > 	Eddy.
> 
> Only release packages would change; no changes to files in git
> 
> * Standalone src packages in
> https://download.qt.io/development_releases/qt/6.3/6.3.0-beta1/single/
> would be  qt-everywhere-src-6.3.0.zip instead of 
> qt-everywhere-src-6.3.0-beta1.zip. And main folder in the archive wouldn't
> contain 'beta1' either
> 
> * Submodule specific src packages in
> https://download.qt.io/development_releases/qt/6.3/6.3.0-beta1/submodules/
> would be qt<submodule>-everywhere-src-6.3.0.zip instead of
> qt<submodule>-everywhere-src-6.3.0-beta1.zip. And main folder in the
> archive wouldn't contain 'beta1' either
> 
> There is no effect to installation done by online installer; in the
> installation there isn't version tag shown at all currently either.
> 
> br,
> Jani


-- 
Albert Astals Cid | albert.astals.cid at kdab.com | Senior Software Engineer
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