NVR bugs in rawhide

[Ralf Corsepius]

Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:54:10 +0200, Ralf wrote:
> 
>> Michael Schwendt wrote:
>>> On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:01:50 +0200, Ralf wrote:
>>>
>>>>> You don't need to drop %dist for koji build inheritance to work.
>>>>>
>>>>> It just looks much cleaner to inherit foo-1.0-1.noarch.rpm for all
>>>>> newer targets
>>>> IFF "current rpm" is sufficiently compatible to the antique version of 
>>>> rpm a package has been built on.
>>>>
>>>> If this doesn't apply you don't get anywhere.
>>> Not _with_ %dist either.
>> Of cause it would help. A package's release tag would very verbosely 
>> tell you that a package is outdated.
> 
> And still it would fail if RPM were changed [the way you describe] while
> %dist stayed the same. 
Right, the key being using %?dist is _rebuilding_.

> %dist doesn't reflect at all whether RPM changes
> its file format near the beginning of a Fedora devel cycle.
Right, but unlike hidden build dates etc. it is clearly _visible_.

>>>> => I agree with Jussi. Allowing people not to use %dist is not helpful. 
>>>> It's a booby trap which certainly will hit some day.
>>> %dist is a trap itself - packagers run into it regularly, e.g. when
>>> adding Obsoletes and versioned dependencies, when doing trial-and-error
>>> fixing of old branches (without paying attention to the recommendations in
>>> the guidelines), when committing and tagging after a server-side update of
>>> the "branches" file.
>> Quite easy to overcome: always use %?dist.
> 
> Doesn't help much. Packager still needs to bump all branches [correctly]
> to recover.
Not true. He needs to rebuild rawhide, not all branches.

>> It's the cases when people add/remove %?dist, which are problematic.
> 
> Going in circles won't be of any use in this thread. Using %dist adds
> complications, too. Or else packagers would not run into some of the
> pitfalls I've pointed out.
Well, they are running into them, because Fedora's NVRs rules are not 
strict enough.

Ralf