Removing provide statement from an existing spec file

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:32:06 +0200, Stefan wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I took over a package a couple of days ago and have a question according
> to a provide statement. Consider the following one:
> 
> Name: myapp
> Provides: myapp.pl
> 
> If I interpret the naming guidelines right, then a period is not allowed
> in a package name. 

Well, better is, but it's not entirely right. Think "openoffice.org"
packages. ;) The period is used as separator/delimiter in RPM package file
names, however, so using it elsewhere may cause confusion in software
that cannot deal with the extra period characters.

> But what about a provide statement (guess it's the same)?

No. See e.g. the automatic library SONAME provides: libfoo.so.0
Or see "rpm -qa --provides".

> In case it is also illegal what would be the best to do. Will yum update
> the package if a user installed previously "myapp.pl" instead of "myapp"
> and the new package does not have a provide statement anymore?

Yes, because the newer "myapp" package will replace the older one,
regardless of its Provides.

> In the
> end the question would be should I follow the guidelines or provide
> backward compatibility in sense of updating.
> 
> cheers
> Stefan
> 
> PS: ".pl" should indicate that it is a Perl script, not a locale.

Try:  repoquery --whatrequires myapp.pl

If nothing uses this virtual package name (and it isn't used upstream
either), get rid of it.