> Your statement is patently wrong, as deb packages do enable distributions such as Debian and other Debian-based distros such as Ubuntu to provide multiple major, minor, and even point releases through their official repos to be installed and run side-by-side .
Through multiple repos. Not through one repo. That's why testing packages live in a separate repo. That's why security packages live in a separate repo. That's why updates live in a separate repo.
If you are using careful versioning on packaging avoiding the <packagename>-<version> as the convention you are breaking other tools, including the tools that are distributed with Debian. Puppets' package { "nginx": ensure => installed } will not work if you decided to allow nginx to have multiple versions using "nginx-1.99" as a special package name.
Wrong. The official debian package repository hosts projects which provide multiple major and even minor versions of the same software package to be installed independently and to coexist side-by-side.
Seriously, you should get to know debian and its packaging system before making any assertion about them. You can simply browse debian's package list and search for software packages such as GCC to quickly acknowledge that your assertion is simply wrong.
It is not. You are talking about a hack/workaround/different methodology. That hack cannot be natively integrated with the other software that uses a regular idea of what is a package name and what is a package version (for example, puppet, which ships with Debian). It is a garbage approach just like the APT approach of using a repo manifest for signatures is garbage, and just like approach of not storing crypto hashes of every file in a .deb inside the .deb is garbage.
I have provided the challenge in another reply:
I have in a repo:
package: nginx
version: 1.99.77
I need to add to the repo:
package: nginx
version: 1.99.78
Both of the versions must remain in the repo. Packages must be signed. Repo must be signed. The name of the package cannot change and neither can the version number. Both of the packages must be installable using a flag that specifies a version number passed to one of the standard Debian package install tools (the tool must be in "main" collection )
What is a tool that can be used that is listed https://wiki.debian.org/DebianRepository/Setup as existing in the "main" part of the Debian? For half a point, you can use any tool listed in the wiki.
Through multiple repos. Not through one repo. That's why testing packages live in a separate repo. That's why security packages live in a separate repo. That's why updates live in a separate repo.
If you are using careful versioning on packaging avoiding the <packagename>-<version> as the convention you are breaking other tools, including the tools that are distributed with Debian. Puppets' package { "nginx": ensure => installed } will not work if you decided to allow nginx to have multiple versions using "nginx-1.99" as a special package name.