On Wed, Sep 24, 2003 at 06:57:38AM -0400, Peter Bowen wrote:
On Wed, 2003-09-24 at 03:45, Axel Thimm wrote:
> That is ugly in multiple ways. Leaving all other reasons for not
> using epochs aside, this will break all upgrade paths from embedded
> disttags like 7.3, 8.0 or 9. The logical conduction would be to have
> these repos also bump up epochs to ensure rpm upgradability or invent
> their own versioning.
>
> o keep redhat-release as a package of its own, so that
> `rpm -q --qf "%{VERSION}" redhat-release' still works.
> o Make the version of this package rpm-monotonic without using epoch
> (or even release tags), e.g. use a version rpm-larger than "9".
> o Put redhat-release into rawhide carrying the anaconda version ...
First, I would encourage you, and anyone else doing something like this
to strongly consider doing 'rpm -qf --qf "%{VERSION}"
/etc/redhat-release', as checking for the redhat-release package will
fail on RHEL.
Thanks for the tip. (I wouldn't like to put RHEL packages in the same
upgrade path line as rh/fc packages, so I would poll the version
explicitely from the corresponding rpm file and use a different
disttag alltogether like rhel3).
Second, it shouldn't be a big deal to come up with a versioning
scheme
that will satisfy your needs. Epochs are definitely not the answer.
Your best bet, if you require the new package to compare favorably
-18.rh80 would be to do -18.1fc,
This would rather read
-18.1fc0.94
(or whatever the fc release might be). Adding the usual repo id tag,
you land at
-18.1fc0.94.at
This my-release-tag-is-longer-than-your-release-tag madness must
stop. It will push repo maintainers to either drop upgrade paths, or
to come up with different versioning, e.g. rh10, to keep their repo
structure intakt.
as that would be "newer" according to rpm. Recent rpm
versions
always will sort a numeric character higher than an alphabetic
character.
Which is also another problem with upgrade paths as the starting
release may have the toggling alphanumeric rpm bug (I think anything
<= rpm-4.1, so at least the whole 7.x series is affected - not that is
really makes sense to jump from 7.x to current rh/fc/rawhide).
--
Axel.Thimm(a)physik.fu-berlin.de