Notice: this Wiki will be going read only early in 2024 and edits will no longer be possible. Please see: https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/wikis/Wiki-shutdown-plan for the plan.
Equinox/p2/Omni Version
Introduction
This page describes a proposal for adding support for non OSGi version and version ranges in Equinox p2. This page was created as a result of the discussion on the p2 call on Dec 1, 2008.
Background
There are other versioning schemes in wide use that are not compatible with OSGi version and version ranges. The problem is both syntactic and semantic.
Example of semantic issue
Many open source projects do their versioning in a fashion similar to OSGi but with one very significant difference. For two versions that are otherwise equal, a lack of qualifier signifies a higher version then when a qualifier is present. I.e.
1.0.0.alpha 1.0.0.beta 1.0.0.rc1 1.0.0
The 1.0.0 is the final release. The qualifier happens to be in alphabetical order here but that's not always true.
Example of syntax issue
Here are some examples of versions used in Red Had Fedora distributions.
KDE Admin version 7:4.0.3-3.fc9 Compat libstdc version 33-3.2.3-63 Automake 1.4p6-15.fc7
These are not syntactically compatible with OSGi versions as they use colon, and dash as leading separators.