http://www.fedora.us/wiki/PackageNamingGuidelines The following is based upon current fedora.us package naming guidelines, quickly edited and dramatically simplified because fedora.redhat.com no longer needs many of fedora.us special considerations. The below proposal is ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME as fedora.us current scheme except with the leading "0.fdr." removed from all %{release} tags. I would assert that fedora.us package naming scheme has demonstrated to be a great success, thus it should continued in fedora.redhat.com. The below scheme is also in-line with the common practices used by most of Red Hat's existing packages. This proposal is missing considerations for 3rd party repositories. Theoretically 3rd party repositories should no longer have a reason to publish the same %{name} of any packages that exist in FC or FE because changes should be incorporated upstream. There are however some cases like kde-redhat where this is not possible, so we really need to discuss possible solutions to this. Earlier we had discussed the possibility of simply adding a %{reptag} to the far right of %{release}. Fedora Package Naming Guidelines Warren's Proposal for fedora.redhat.com Revision 1 ================================ i. Introduction Goals for package naming guidelines ii. Terminology A. Package Name B. Version C. Release Tag 1. Release Prefix 2. Vepoch 3. Non-Numeric Version to Release 4. Dist tag 5. Special: Kernel modules 6. Special: Plugin, theme etc packages 7. Special: Minor Number i. Introduction =============== Goals for the Fedora Package Naming Guidelines * Easily understandable package naming policy * Indication of the original source version (end-user convenience) * Allow for a smooth upgrade path between multiple levels of testing branches and future distribution upgrades. This means E-V-R must never be exactly identical between distribution versions. * Minimize the chance of package conflicts for future Fedora distribution upgrades. ii. Terminology ============== name This is the "Name" field of RPM .spec files. version This is the "Version" field of RPM .spec files. release tag This is the "Release" field of RPM .spec files. dist tag This is a distribution tag indicating which RHL/FC distribution this package is intended for. This only occurs in cases where packages from different distributions are built from the same SRPM and patchlevel. vepoch This is our term for "version specific epoch", used in all packages as a simple means of ensuring upgrades by simple incrementing the leading number within the release tag. vepoch is otherwise known as "release number" or "patchlevel". Read C-2 for more information. E-V-R Abbreviation for epoch, version, and release. This is often referred to when talking about potential package upgrading problems. A. Package Name =============== Package name should preferably match the upstream tarball or project name from which this software came. In some cases this naming choice is more complicated. If this package has been packaged by other distributions/packagers (Mandrake, SuSE, Conectiva, PLD, PLF, FreshRPMS, etc.) in the past, then we should try to match their name for consistency. In any case, try to use your best judgement, and other developers will help in the final decision. Ultimately it is up to QA to decide upon the proper %{name} before publication. B. Version ========== If the version is only numbers, then these numbers can be put into the "version" field of the RPM .spec unchanged. If the version contains non-numeric characters, this creates several problems for RPM version comparison and a broken upgrade path. Example: foobar-1.2.3beta1.tar.gz foobar-1.2.3.tar.gz While the "1.2.3" version is newer than the 1.2.3beta1 version, RPM version comparison thinks the former is newer. Example: foobar-1.0a foobar-1.0b The "1.0b" version is higher than "1.0a", but all versions of RPM prior to rpm-4.2-0.55 are confused when it tries to compare letters. Whichever package is first in the comparison "wins", thus this becomes a two way upgrade problem. This a < b comparison works properly only in RH9 and higher. For simplicity, Fedora treats both pre-release and post-release non-numeric version cases the same, making the version purely numeric and moving the alphabetic part to the release tag. Take the numeric portion of the source version and make that the package version tag. Read C-3 for more details. C. Release Tag ============== The release tag of Fedora packages more complicated, so this is split into several parts. C-1. Release Prefix ------------------- No longer needed in fedora.redhat.com. C-2. Vepoch ----------- The leftmost leading number within the release tag is the "version specific epoch" or vepoch in Fedora. This number is incremented with every package update. The vepoch is otherwise known as the "release number" or "patchlevel". The key difference between the concept of "vepoch" and "patch level" is that everything to the right of the vepoch is PURELY INFORMATIONAL. The only time where it matters is to guarantee a different %{release} tag between two distribution versions. The vepoch is to be respected by Fedora Core/Extras/Alternatives/Legacy as canonical. Package updates in any repository should always check all other official repositories to be sure that the vepoch is always incremented and never matching an existing package. With most normal packages, vepoch is a single number starting at "1". Under the (C-3) non-numeric version case it is two numbers starting at "0.1" with the second number being the number to increment. Normal Package Example: foobar-1.2.3-1.src.rpm compiles to foobar-1.2.3-1.i386.rpm If this package is patched: foobar-1.2.3-2.i386.rpm foobar-1.2.3-3.i386.rpm C-3. Non-Numeric Version to Release ----------------------------------- As mentioned above in section B (Version) and C-2 (Vepoch), non-numeric versioned packages can be problematic so they must be treated with care. These are cases where the upstream version has letters rather than simple numbers in their version. Often they have tags like alpha, beta, rc, or letters like a and b denoting that it is a version before or after the number. Read section B to understand why we cannot simply put these letters into the version tag. Release Tag for Pre-Release Packages: 0.%{X}.%{alphatag} Release Tag for Non-Numeric Post-Release Packages: %{X}.%{alphatag} Where %{X} is the vepoch increment, and %{alphatag} is the string that came from the version. Example (pre-release): mozilla-1.4a.tar.gz from usptream is lower than mozilla-1.4.tar.gz the later "final" version thus mozilla-1.4-0.1.a Fedora package name Example (pre-release): alsa-lib-0.9.2beta1.tar.gz becomes alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.1.beta1 Example (post-release): gkrellm-2.1.7.tar.gz gkrellm-2.1.7a.tar.gz Quick bugfix release after 2.1.7 gkrellm-2.1.7-1.a Upgrade Path Example (mozilla): mozilla-1.4-0.1.a Patched mozilla-1.4-0.2.a Patched again mozilla-1.4-0.3.a Move to 1.4b mozilla-1.4-0.4.b Patched mozilla-1.4-0.5.b Move to 1.4 "final" version Notice that this becomes a normal C-2 case mozilla-1.4-1 Patched mozilla-1.4-2 Upgrade Path Example (alsa-lib): alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.1.beta1 Patched alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.2.beta1 Move to beta2 alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.3.beta2 Move to beta3 and simultaneously patch alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.4.beta3 Patched again alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.5.beta3 Move to rc1 alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.6.rc1 Move to rc2 alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.7.rc2 Move to "final" alsa-lib-0.9.2-1 Patched alsa-lib-0.9.2-2 C-4. Dist tag ------------- In cases where the same SRPM and patchlevel is used between two or more distributions supported by Fedora, a dist tag is appended to the end of the release tag defined in C-2 and C-3. The dist tags with the following examples appear to be only cosmetic, however the a different E-V-R is needed between distributions to ensure dist upgrading works fully in all corner cases. Dist Tag for Normal Packages: %{X}.%{disttag} Where %{X} is the vepoch and %{disttag} is a distribution tag from this table: 0.7.3 Red Hat Linux 7.3 0.8 Red Hat Linux 8 0.9 Red Hat Linux 9 1 Fedora Core 1 1.93 Fedora Core 1.93 beta 1.94 Fedora Core 1.94 beta 2 Fedora Core 2 beta Example: foobar-1.2.3-1_0.7.3.i386.rpm foobar-1.2.3-1_0.8.i386.rpm foobar-1.2.3-1_0.9.i386.rpm foobar-1.2.3-1_1.94.i386.rpm foobar-1.2.3-1_2.i386.rpm Upgrade Path Example (FC1 only shown): foobar-1.2.3-1_1.i386.rpm foobar-1.2.3-2_1.i386.rpm foobar-1.2.3-3_1.i386.rpm Dist Tag for Pre-Release Packages: %{X}.%{alphatag}.%{disttag} Where %{X} is the vepoch, %{alphatag} is the pre-release tag described in C-3, %{disttag} is a distribution tag described above. Example: alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.1.beta1_0.8.i386.rpm alsa-lib for RH 8.0 alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.1.beta1_1.i386.rpm alsa-lib for FC1 Upgrade Path Example (RH 7.3 only shown): alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.1.beta1_0.7.3 alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.2.beta1_0.7.3 alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.3.beta2_0.7.3 alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.4.beta3_0.7.3 alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.5.beta3_0.7.3 alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.6.rc1_0.7.3 alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.7.rc2_0.7.3 alsa-lib-0.9.2-1_0.7.3 alsa-lib-0.9.2-2_0.7.3 C-5. Special Case: Kernel modules --------------------------------- This section needs its own discussion due to changed provides within FC1's kernel, and the fact that older distributions are different. C-6. Plugin, theme etc packages ------------------------------- Packages that are plugins, themes or the like, ie. enhance other packages must be named <package-to-enhance>-<enhancement>. If the resulting name differs significantly from upstream naming, a Provides: <upstream-name> = %{epoch}:%{version}-%{release} must be added. For example: Upstream package name: modplug-xmms Fedora package name: xmms-modplug Provides: modplug-xmms = %{epoch}:%{version}-%{release} C-7. Minor Number ----------------------- Probably no longer needed at fedora.redhat.com.