On Tue, 2007-07-03 at 13:56 -0600, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
On 7/3/07, Toshio Kuratomi <a.badger(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> We didn't have quorum in the Fedora Packaging Meeting but we did discuss
> the proposal[1]_ to relax the guidelines for packages with multiple
> versions. After some discussion it was decided that restricting the
> maintainer too much is not desirable. Some points:
>
> * Guideline was written in the present manner to avoid confusion
> * Using compat-* as a namespace for all less than current libraries has
> the following disadvantages over [name][version]:
> * cvs history won't follow the compat-* even though it is arguably
> closer to the original package than the upgraded one.
> * BuildRequires would have to be changed between branches to
> accommodate the compat-* on the newer branch.
>
> I'd like to have votes on relaxing the guidelines as follows:
>
> '''
> For many reasons, it is sometimes advantageous to keep multiple versions
> of a package in Fedora to be installed simultaneously. When doing so,
> the package name should reflect this fact. One package should use the
> base name with no versions and all other addons should note their
> version in the name.
> '''
>
> This gives the maintainer the leeway to choose whether the package is
> best served by having the latest version carry the unadorned name
> forward or the previous version.
So I can see this in my head... this would be like
python15
python20
python22
python23
python24
python
for something like say EPEL where you might need to have
python23/24/30 installed on a system for an app to work since the
shipped version is 22. I would say that there would need to be a
standardization of how these older items should/would be packaged up
so that people do not accidently run one when the other was wanted.
Or is this meaning something else?
This change only addresses the naming of such a package, not the
contents.
Your EPEL example is a bit problematic under the old guidelines because,
following the letter of the guideline, [basename][version] that is newer
than [basename] would not be allowed. So with python-2.3 in RHEL4 a
python15 package would be named appropriately. python24 would not.
With the new proposal the name python24 would be legal.
-Toshio