Versioning scheme for jdt.core patch causes dependency conflicts

[mosconi]

Using version numbers like 3.1024.x causes dependency constraints like [3.4.0,3.5.0) to fail. Encountered with org.eclipse.jst.jsp.core.

[stephan]

Patches within the range r19126 - r19136 introduce a new versioning scheme for org.eclipse.jdt.core:

<A.B.C>.v_OTDT_r<def>_qualifier

Where

• <A.B.C> is the JDT major, minor, micro number
• <def> is the compressed OTDT major, minor, micro number (one char per segment)
• qualifier is the OTDT build date & time

This scheme has the advantage that version numbers differ from original JDT versions only in the qualifier, thereby fixing the reported problem.

We can also guarantee that an OTDT version number will always be greater than the corresponding JDT version, because the qualifier will always be greater than the original's, which starts with v_<n>, where <n> is the consecutive release number. We use the same first two chars v_; the subsequent OTDT is lexically greater than any number.

The downside of all this: it seems to be impossible to update from a version using the old scheme to a newer version using the new scheme: 3.1024.3.qualifier definitely is greater than its supposed successors 3.4.2.v_OTDT... :(

While the original problem speaks about plainly unsatisfiable constraints, the latter issue means that users have to start over from a fresh eclipse install, which is not nice but at least doable.

Closing due to lack of better alternatives.