Warren's Package Naming Proposal - Revision 1
Warren Togami
warren at togami.com
Fri Oct 31 09:22:27 UTC 2003
http://www.fedora.us/wiki/PackageNamingGuidelines
The following is based upon current fedora.us package naming guidelines,
quickly edited and dramatically simplified because fedora.redhat.com no
longer needs many of fedora.us special considerations.
The below proposal is ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME as fedora.us current
scheme except with the leading "0.fdr." removed from all %{release}
tags. I would assert that fedora.us package naming scheme has
demonstrated to be a great success, thus it should continued in
fedora.redhat.com. The below scheme is also in-line with the common
practices used by most of Red Hat's existing packages.
This proposal is missing considerations for 3rd party repositories.
Theoretically 3rd party repositories should no longer have a reason to
publish the same %{name} of any packages that exist in FC or FE because
changes should be incorporated upstream. There are however some cases
like kde-redhat where this is not possible, so we really need to discuss
possible solutions to this. Earlier we had discussed the possibility of
simply adding a %{reptag} to the far right of %{release}.
Fedora Package Naming Guidelines
Warren's Proposal for fedora.redhat.com
Revision 1
================================
i. Introduction
Goals for package naming guidelines
ii. Terminology
A. Package Name
B. Version
C. Release Tag
1. Release Prefix
2. Vepoch
3. Non-Numeric Version to Release
4. Dist tag
5. Special: Kernel modules
6. Special: Plugin, theme etc packages
7. Special: Minor Number
i. Introduction
===============
Goals for the Fedora Package Naming Guidelines
* Easily understandable package naming policy
* Indication of the original source version (end-user convenience)
* Allow for a smooth upgrade path between multiple levels of testing
branches and future distribution upgrades. This means E-V-R must never
be exactly identical between distribution versions.
* Minimize the chance of package conflicts for future Fedora
distribution upgrades.
ii. Terminology
==============
name
This is the "Name" field of RPM .spec files.
version
This is the "Version" field of RPM .spec files.
release tag
This is the "Release" field of RPM .spec files.
dist tag
This is a distribution tag indicating which RHL/FC distribution this
package is intended for. This only occurs in cases where packages from
different distributions are built from the same SRPM and patchlevel.
vepoch
This is our term for "version specific epoch", used in all packages as a
simple means of ensuring upgrades by simple incrementing the leading
number within the release tag. vepoch is otherwise known as "release
number" or "patchlevel". Read C-2 for more information.
E-V-R
Abbreviation for epoch, version, and release. This is often referred to
when talking about potential package upgrading problems.
A. Package Name
===============
Package name should preferably match the upstream tarball or project
name from which this software came. In some cases this naming choice is
more complicated. If this package has been packaged by other
distributions/packagers (Mandrake, SuSE, Conectiva, PLD, PLF, FreshRPMS,
etc.) in the past, then we should try to match their name for
consistency. In any case, try to use your best judgement, and other
developers will help in the final decision.
Ultimately it is up to QA to decide upon the proper %{name} before
publication.
B. Version
==========
If the version is only numbers, then these numbers can be put into the
"version" field of the RPM .spec unchanged. If the version contains
non-numeric characters, this creates several problems for RPM version
comparison and a broken upgrade path.
Example:
foobar-1.2.3beta1.tar.gz
foobar-1.2.3.tar.gz
While the "1.2.3" version is newer than the 1.2.3beta1 version, RPM
version comparison thinks the former is newer.
Example:
foobar-1.0a
foobar-1.0b
The "1.0b" version is higher than "1.0a", but all versions of RPM prior
to rpm-4.2-0.55 are confused when it tries to compare letters. Whichever
package is first in the comparison "wins", thus this becomes a two way
upgrade problem. This a < b comparison works properly only in RH9 and
higher.
For simplicity, Fedora treats both pre-release and post-release
non-numeric version cases the same, making the version purely numeric
and moving the alphabetic part to the release tag. Take the numeric
portion of the source version and make that the package version tag.
Read C-3 for more details.
C. Release Tag
==============
The release tag of Fedora packages more complicated, so this is split
into several parts.
C-1. Release Prefix
-------------------
No longer needed in fedora.redhat.com.
C-2. Vepoch
-----------
The leftmost leading number within the release tag is the "version
specific epoch" or vepoch in Fedora. This number is incremented with
every package update. The vepoch is otherwise known as the "release
number" or "patchlevel".
The key difference between the concept of "vepoch" and "patch level" is
that everything to the right of the vepoch is PURELY INFORMATIONAL. The
only time where it matters is to guarantee a different %{release} tag
between two distribution versions.
The vepoch is to be respected by Fedora Core/Extras/Alternatives/Legacy
as canonical. Package updates in any repository should always check all
other official repositories to be sure that the vepoch is always
incremented and never matching an existing package.
With most normal packages, vepoch is a single number starting at "1".
Under the (C-3) non-numeric version case it is two numbers starting at
"0.1" with the second number being the number to increment.
Normal Package Example:
foobar-1.2.3-1.src.rpm compiles to
foobar-1.2.3-1.i386.rpm
If this package is patched:
foobar-1.2.3-2.i386.rpm
foobar-1.2.3-3.i386.rpm
C-3. Non-Numeric Version to Release
-----------------------------------
As mentioned above in section B (Version) and C-2 (Vepoch), non-numeric
versioned packages can be problematic so they must be treated with care.
These are cases where the upstream version has letters rather than
simple numbers in their version. Often they have tags like alpha, beta,
rc, or letters like a and b denoting that it is a version before or
after the number. Read section B to understand why we cannot simply put
these letters into the version tag.
Release Tag for Pre-Release Packages:
0.%{X}.%{alphatag}
Release Tag for Non-Numeric Post-Release Packages:
%{X}.%{alphatag}
Where %{X} is the vepoch increment, and %{alphatag} is the string that
came from the version.
Example (pre-release):
mozilla-1.4a.tar.gz from usptream is lower than
mozilla-1.4.tar.gz the later "final" version thus
mozilla-1.4-0.1.a Fedora package name
Example (pre-release):
alsa-lib-0.9.2beta1.tar.gz becomes
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.1.beta1
Example (post-release):
gkrellm-2.1.7.tar.gz
gkrellm-2.1.7a.tar.gz Quick bugfix release after 2.1.7
gkrellm-2.1.7-1.a
Upgrade Path Example (mozilla):
mozilla-1.4-0.1.a
Patched
mozilla-1.4-0.2.a
Patched again
mozilla-1.4-0.3.a
Move to 1.4b
mozilla-1.4-0.4.b
Patched
mozilla-1.4-0.5.b
Move to 1.4 "final" version
Notice that this becomes a normal C-2 case
mozilla-1.4-1
Patched
mozilla-1.4-2
Upgrade Path Example (alsa-lib):
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.1.beta1
Patched
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.2.beta1
Move to beta2
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.3.beta2
Move to beta3 and simultaneously patch
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.4.beta3
Patched again
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.5.beta3
Move to rc1
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.6.rc1
Move to rc2
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.7.rc2
Move to "final"
alsa-lib-0.9.2-1
Patched
alsa-lib-0.9.2-2
C-4. Dist tag
-------------
In cases where the same SRPM and patchlevel is used between two or more
distributions supported by Fedora, a dist tag is appended to the end of
the release tag defined in C-2 and C-3. The dist tags with the
following examples appear to be only cosmetic, however the a different
E-V-R is needed between distributions to ensure dist upgrading works
fully in all corner cases.
Dist Tag for Normal Packages:
%{X}.%{disttag}
Where %{X} is the vepoch and %{disttag} is a distribution tag from this
table:
0.7.3 Red Hat Linux 7.3
0.8 Red Hat Linux 8
0.9 Red Hat Linux 9
1 Fedora Core 1
1.93 Fedora Core 1.93 beta
1.94 Fedora Core 1.94 beta
2 Fedora Core 2 beta
Example:
foobar-1.2.3-1_0.7.3.i386.rpm
foobar-1.2.3-1_0.8.i386.rpm
foobar-1.2.3-1_0.9.i386.rpm
foobar-1.2.3-1_1.94.i386.rpm
foobar-1.2.3-1_2.i386.rpm
Upgrade Path Example (FC1 only shown):
foobar-1.2.3-1_1.i386.rpm
foobar-1.2.3-2_1.i386.rpm
foobar-1.2.3-3_1.i386.rpm
Dist Tag for Pre-Release Packages:
%{X}.%{alphatag}.%{disttag}
Where %{X} is the vepoch, %{alphatag} is the pre-release tag described
in C-3, %{disttag} is a distribution tag described above.
Example:
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.1.beta1_0.8.i386.rpm
alsa-lib for RH 8.0
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.1.beta1_1.i386.rpm
alsa-lib for FC1
Upgrade Path Example (RH 7.3 only shown):
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.1.beta1_0.7.3
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.2.beta1_0.7.3
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.3.beta2_0.7.3
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.4.beta3_0.7.3
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.5.beta3_0.7.3
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.6.rc1_0.7.3
alsa-lib-0.9.2-0.7.rc2_0.7.3
alsa-lib-0.9.2-1_0.7.3
alsa-lib-0.9.2-2_0.7.3
C-5. Special Case: Kernel modules
---------------------------------
This section needs its own discussion due to changed provides within
FC1's kernel, and the fact that older distributions are different.
C-6. Plugin, theme etc packages
-------------------------------
Packages that are plugins, themes or the like, ie. enhance other
packages must be named <package-to-enhance>-<enhancement>. If the
resulting name differs significantly from upstream naming, a
Provides: <upstream-name> = %{epoch}:%{version}-%{release}
must be added. For example:
Upstream package name: modplug-xmms
Fedora package name: xmms-modplug
Provides: modplug-xmms = %{epoch}:%{version}-%{release}
C-7. Minor Number
-----------------------
Probably no longer needed at fedora.redhat.com.
More information about the fedora-devel-list
mailing list