Why is there only one version of Spring in the ppa?

[Rubrick]

I'm using the ppa from https://launchpad.net/~spring/+archive/ppa to get the spring engine on my Ubuntu based system.

Usually, this works great, but it breaks down when for example, I just upgraded to 89 and the Zero K community (in their collective wisdom) subsequently decides to fall back to 88. So now I'm basically screwed, because 1) afaik I can't roll back and 2) the ppa contains only the current version.

It's not the first time I've had this problem (http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=27054), but I forgot to ask why there's only one version in the ppa. So here goes: why is that?

(Note: of course I can download and build from source, and I *have* done so, but somehow this seems wrong since the ppa is supposed to make life easier.)

[koshi]

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... 04#p525204 and a couple of posts before that

[Rubrick]

Hmm... "It's simply not possible with the way spring packing is setup atm." Well, that's not really an answer, is it?

When I'm browsing in synaptic through some of my installed packages, there seem to be plenty of them where I could force another version if I wanted to. So, as a complete newbie on packaging, I'd just ask: "Why can they do it and we cannot?"

Note that I'm not asking for the possibility of having two versions of spring installed at the same time (although that would be awesome). I just want to force my installation back to an earlier version.

(Also note that I'm just curious and don't want to trespass on your time. You could always tell me to just rtfm...)

[koshi]

There's a difference between you being able to force an older version to install and having multiple versions 'visible'. The former you already can, as far back as there had been builds only ofc. The latter isn't possible because spring packages don't carry a version in the package name. So it's always that a newer version will replace, as the one visible/installed by default, the older one when pushed to the repository.
Google/man the syntax for apt and installing a given version of a package, that should work for at least a couple revs back in spring's ppa.

[Rubrick]

Wouldn't those older versions have to be available somewhere? I certainly don't have those .deb files lying around locally.

Example session:

Code: Select all

~$ sudo apt-get install spring=89.0~11.10~ppa1
...
spring is already the newest version.
~$ sudo apt-get install spring=88.0~11.10~ppa1
...
E: Version '88.0~11.10~ppa1' for 'spring' was not found
~$

[varikonniemi]

I went through this same ordeal when v89 was released and zk reverted to 88.

The first method i tried was the same as you and koshi are describing, but i got the same not found error as you. It found only v85 and v89 (ubuntu ppa, spring ppa?).

I stopped troubleshooting when i found the portable install of spring which worked fine.

+1 for anything that could fix this, like naming the packages as spring89 spring90 and so we could arrive on to ultimately have multiple engines concurrently installed?

However, according to what koshi wrote, installing 88 should have worked as stated in the above post, maybe the ubuntu maintainer just got lazy and "cleaned up" a bit much.