using Obsoletes with debuginfo packages

[Ian Young <ian iay org uk>]

Hi folks,

We have a set of packages built from a single .spec file, let's call
them foo, foo-devel, foo-doc etc.  We need to rename this package to
avoid a clash with a later version of foo becoming available in the
Fedora Extras repository.

So, we are now building bar, bar-devel, bar-doc etc. from a modified
.spec file.  We use "Obsoletes: foo <= x.x.x" on each sub-package so
that we can upgrade our package in the middle of a chain of
dependencies.  Packages dependent on foo have dependencies on libraries
provided by foo (libfoo.so.26, say) and not explicitly on foo itself.

The problem I've run into is that this doesn't work for the implicitly
generated foo-debuginfo package.  Although the revised .spec file does
generate a bar-debuginfo package as expected, it doesn't obsolete the
foo-debuginfo package.

Is there a way to infiltrate an "Obsoletes:" line into the implicit
debuginfo sub-package?  Is there some other solution short of telling
people to manually uninstall the -debuginfo package before upgrading?

We're most concerned here with Fedora Core 5 and 6, if it matters (and
presumably RHEL 5 when available).  I'd prefer not to do anything that
only works in those environments, though.

	-- Ian