RFC: Soname in rpm name

[Michael Schwendt]

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 07:13:38 -0500, Jeff Johnson wrote:

> Aurelien Bompard wrote:
> 
> >Jeff Johnson wrote:
> >  
> >
> >>Try with rpm -i.
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >Yeah OK. How about something that would be understood by depsolvers then ?
> >  
> >
> 
> Depsolvers (at least correctly written ones) use Provides:, not Name:, 
> for choosing
> what packages to install.

We need to support what we do have right now. And neither Yum nor
"rpm -Uvh" would _not_ upgrade package libfoo to a newer libfoo.

> The only reason for ornamenting the package name with gunk is to attempt 
> to provide
> a clue of differences through primitive HTTP/FTP browser GUI's.
> 
> >This must be a common problem, isn't it ? What do you do when an important
> >library changes its soname in the next version ?
> >  
> >
> 
> Usually a soname is slam-dunked, the library and every package that uses 
> the library
> are changed at the same time. That works for the distro itself.

Does it? Then why do we have packages like openmotif21 and openmotif,
libpng10, libpng10-devel, libpng, libpng-devel in the distro?

It's not different from what we've done in fedora.us packages.
Include parts of the soname version in the package name to make
multiple library versions coexist nicely, i.e. also during upgrades.
Package resolvers pick the right package based on automatic
Provides/Requires.