The alternative to setting up a PR Service is to manually
bump the
PR
variable.
If a committed change results in changing the package output,
then the value of the PR variable needs to be increased
(or "bumped") as part of that commit.
For new recipes you should add the PR
variable and set its initial value equal to "r0", which is the default.
Even though the default value is "r0", the practice of adding it to a new recipe makes
it harder to forget to bump the variable when you make changes
to the recipe in future.
If you are sharing a common .inc
file with multiple recipes,
you can also use the
INC_PR
variable to ensure that
the recipes sharing the .inc
file are rebuilt when the
.inc
file itself is changed.
The .inc
file must set INC_PR
(initially to "r0"), and all recipes referring to it should set PR
to "$(INC_PR).0" initially, incrementing the last number when the recipe is changed.
If the .inc
file is changed then its
INC_PR
should be incremented.
When upgrading the version of a package, assuming the
PV
changes, the PR
variable should be
reset to "r0" (or "$(INC_PR).0" if you are using
INC_PR
).
Usually, version increases occur only to packages.
However, if for some reason PV
changes but does not
increase, you can increase the
PE
variable (Package Epoch).
The PE
variable defaults to "0".
Version numbering strives to follow the Debian Version Field Policy Guidelines. These guidelines define how versions are compared and what "increasing" a version means.