Re: Format of %changelog line

[Jeff Johnson <n3npq jbj gmail com>]

On Feb 4, 2007, at 10:53 AM, Matthew Miller wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 04, 2007 at 04:51:17PM +0100, Jos Vos wrote:
> > Many recent RPMs have a "-" between the packager's e-mail address and
> > the EVR in the %changelog line.  What is the purpose of this dash?
>
> Arbitrary separator.

Entirely arbitrary.

Mandriva nee Mandrake exploited the flaw in rpmbuild's parsing of e-mail
addresses, not checking for the closing '>', and started appending  
pkg version
info to RPMTAG_CHANGELOGNAME way back when.

> > What is the current (well, I mean 4.4.x, if that matters) syntax of
> > a %changelog line?
>
> Offically, I think it's *just* the date followed by a freeform string
> identifying the person who made the change.

Official is rather pompous for a defacto exploit of a parsing flaw,  
isn't it?

The parser has not been changed since forever, hardly worth the
effort imho.

73 de Jeff