Re: RFC: Soname in rpm name

[Jeff Johnson <n3npq nc rr com>]

Michael Schwendt wrote:

> On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 08:53:17 -0500, seth vidal wrote:
>
>  
>
> > > Sounds interesting. On the other hand, maybe we could do it manually (from a
> > > packager's point of view) : if you package library foo, and you know that
> > > version 0.1 is not supported anymore (noone knows that better than you
> > > since you maintain it), you can add an Obsoletes tag to your libfoo5
> > > package, and force the removal.
> > > Would that solve Jeff's issue ?
> > >
> > >      
> > Obsoletes should be used when a package changes name. Not when someone
> > thinks a new version gets rid of an old version.
> >    
>
> Where are such strict semantics of the "Obsoletes" field defined?
>  

The strict semantics are hard coded in up2date and yum, for starters, 
hard coded
is strict enough for me.

> Isn't it rather free to use? As in "we don't need that package
> any longer, it's obsolete and can be erased"?
>  

Sure, feel free to do whatever. Without well defined packaging guidelines,
packages will break, but reports will be filed, packages will be fixed
and, life as usual.

> If, for instance, functionality of one package is supplied by another
> package, that's not a rename, but a relocation of package
> capabilities. Package "foo" would "Obsoletes: bar <= 1.0". If an old
> library API/ABI is not used anymore and hence considered obsolete, a
> new version of the library could "Obsolete: libfoo <= 0.9" just fine.
>  

Obsoletes: has changed to erase a package that contains a virtual 
provides for
exactly this reason.

In fact, dependency comparisons don't use package NEVR at all several 
years now
in order to handle functionality shifts that are not package renames.

73 de Jeff