This "4:" part is nothing to do with Perl's version numbering, nor with any Perl modules.

It's the rpm's "epoch". Many package managers (RPM is one; Debian packages do much the same) support an optional "epoch" which overrides the software's normal version number when it comes to figuring out whether version A is newer than version B.

An example of why package managers do this sort of thing. Consider package "foobar" which has versions "1.0", "1.1", ... "1.9". Now perhaps the developer releases "1.10" and "1.11" next, but the packager realises that RPM will treat "foobar-1.10" as being identical to "foobar-1.1", and "foobar-1.11" as older than "foobar-1.2". So the packager bumps the epoch, calling them "foobar-2:1.10" and "foobar-2:1.11". This ensures that they'll be seen as newer than "foobar-1.9".

use Moops; class Cow :rw { has name => (default => 'Ermintrude') }; say Cow->new->name

In reply to Re: What is the colon : in perl library. by tobyink
in thread What is the colon : in perl library. by redflammingo

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