rpmvercmp (was: dovecot imap available for testing, latest upstream release 0.99.10.6)

[Michal Jaegermann <michal harddata com>]

On Thu, Jul 01, 2004 at 02:23:53PM -0400, John Dennis wrote:
> 
> No assumptions should be made about the format of the release string
> other than it collate correctly when presented to rpmvercmp (the
> comparison function in rpm which has specific well defined semantics).

How you are using rpmvercmp, say, in a shell script?  AFAIK there is
no interface which would make that available.  Or this is one of
those undocumented mysteries of rpm?

> Unfortunately we are pretty much stuck with n-v-r for historical
> reasons.

This I can reliably pick apart using --queryformat but now what?

In case you wonder if I need that in shell scripts and similar then
the answer is that indeed I do (and many others too).  A comparison
utility which would compare (or even collate but that I can do
myself) according to rpmvercmp would be really useful.

   Michal