Clarify the use of EPOCH in ports Makefiles.

Whith lots of help from sthen@, espie@ and jca@

ok espie@ jca@

1 files changed, 10 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/share/man/man7/packages-specs.7 b/share/man/man7/packages-specs.7
index cf33526d69a..1d90496d531 100644
--- a/share/man/man7/packages-specs.7
+++ b/share/man/man7/packages-specs.7
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-.\" $OpenBSD: packages-specs.7,v 1.25 2014/10/27 22:45:30 gsoares Exp $
+.\" $OpenBSD: packages-specs.7,v 1.26 2020/03/26 14:58:35 paco Exp $
 .\"
 .\" Copyright (c) 2001 Marc Espie
 .\"
@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@
 .\" (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF
 .\" THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
 .\"
-.Dd $Mdocdate: October 27 2014 $
+.Dd $Mdocdate: March 26 2020 $
 .Dt PACKAGES-SPECS 7
 .Os
 .Sh NAME
@@ -144,15 +144,20 @@ then normal version, and finally
 .El
 .El
 .Pp
-In some rare cases, version numbering changes completely upstream.
+In some rare cases, a change to a port would cause the version number to
+compare as older than the previous version.
+This happens if an update is reverted, if upstream's numbering scheme changes
+completely, or if their usual scheme does not align with the one used by
+.Ox .
 A version style marker, of the form
 .Sq v0 ,
 .Sq v1 ...
 can be appended to the version number (after the patch level)
 to denote the new numbering scheme.
-See
+This marker is added by setting
 .Ev EPOCH
-in
+in the port Makefile and it takes precedence over the regular package version.
+See
 .Xr bsd.port.mk 5 .
 .Pp
 Flavored packages will also contain a list of flavors after the version