On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 12:49 AM, Greg Troxel <gdt%ir.bbn.com@localhost> wrote: > package with no suffix is the latest stable, and suffixes are old > versions > > seems reasonable as well. And after adding that, we have arrived, more > or less, at the current state, so I'm not sure what you want to change. That's not true for python, there is no package without a version number. Which is, in a way, the problem one of my users had, when I switch from Python 2.5 to 2.6 a few weeks ago. As all packages are versioned, the name of the interpreter changed from python25 to python26. I don't know if his software has problems per se to change from 2.5 to 2.6, but at least the changed name of the interpreter broke his application. Having a consistent name for a binary would be IMHO a nice side effect of having a default package without a version number. The Java packages are another example, where the name of the "interpreter" changes with every package. Some mechanism to say "this is the (or even better: 'my') default package, and it provides /usr/pkg/bin/python, /usr/pkg/bin/java, etc." would provide another aspect of stability. At least as long as the application is compatible with the different versions of Python/Java/etc, of course. Joern -- Joern Clausen http://thebloeg.blogspot.com/ http://www.oe-files.de/oefiles/