Repotags do have meaningful version information (was: repotags proposal)

Dag Wieers dag at wieers.com
Wed May 23 12:56:06 UTC 2007


On Wed, 23 May 2007, Dag Wieers wrote:

> On Wed, 23 May 2007, Tim Lauridsen wrote:
> > Panu Matilainen wrote:
> >
> > > My 5c on the topic I've been trying to avoid because it's too flammable for
> > > my taste. I hate politics so I'm not going to get into that, I'm commenting
> > > from purely technical POV, and actually have a proposal that might make them
> > > unnecessary.
> > >
> > > Repotags as part of release string are just plain wrong. Unlike disttag, the
> > > repotag does not have a meaningful version information in it, it's really
> > > just a fuzz-factor to somehow differentiate packages coming from different
> > > places.
> 
> It does have meaningful version information in a multi-repository world. 
> It shows what version of the package you have. rf means this is the 
> RPMforge version. It makes the package/filename/version unique !

-snip-

> Especially when packages from different repositories have the same NEVR, 
> similar sub-packages and have dependencies between them.
> 
> The clamav package is a nice example. Without repotags, dependencies would 
> exists between packages from different repositories.
> 
> Saying that repotags have no meaningful version information is very wrong. 
> It makes the system work.

For everybody involved, please read the above again.

Most people object to repotags because the repotag does not have any use 
in the version comparison. That's right, it does not.

But it *does* affect dependencies when there is no identifier in the 
version/release information. Particularly when there is more than one 
repository.

So it is indisputable that it is meaningful in the version information, 
because without it RPM would fail to resolve dependencies in a correct 
way.

This was brought up at least 3 times in the previous discusisons. You see 
why it is frustrating when people keep on objecting but loose half of the 
information that was provided. Why we have to repeat. Why Axel gets tired.

Kind regards,
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]




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