[Guidelines Change] Conflicts

[Michael Wiktowy]

On 5/7/07, Tom spot Callaway <tcallawa at redhat.com> wrote:
> Packagers should keep usage of Conflicts: to a bare minimum. Only
> upgrading from two previous release of Fedora is supported, so Conflicts
> against older packages than that, while technically correct, are
> unnecessary, and should not be included.

Phrases like "technically correct but don't do this anyways", too me,
scream for justification why it is otherwise correct.

I can see justification for pruning stupidly complicated Conflicts for clarity.

I can also see the encouraging the reverse perspective where Conflicts
of a certain age are not *required*.

But to discourage a correct Conflicts because it is more than a year
old is questionable as it is creating more work for the packager and
is throwing up artificial roadblocks for large update leaps. As
witnessed by the number of inquiries on the fedora-list labeled "Can I
yum/anaconda update FC1->FC7?" ... this is going to bite a lot of
people someday.

Just seeking some clarity why not doing the right thing is the right
thing to do.

/Mike