incompatible packaging between EPEL and DAG/rpmforge

[Rex Dieter]

David Mansfield wrote:

> For years I've been really happy with the combo of Centos +
> DAG/rpmforge.  But now that I need EPEL for git rpms, there are a number
> of painful conflicts appearing between EPEL and DAG/rpmforge.  Since
> DAG/rpmforge has been the gold standard for add-ons for years prior to
> EPEL, I think it would be great to eliminate these conflicts.
> 
> If possible, I'd like to know what I can do to help fix these.
> 
> Currently, my issue is with perl-DateTime, but perl-Error has also been
> a thorn which was only resolved with some ugly '--force' action.
> 
> The perl-DateTime RPM is currently showing 0.41, however it wants to
> replace my version from rpmforge which is 0.42.
> 
> I don't know why, but when doing a '--provides' on the two packages, the
> EPEL one shows:
> 
> perl-DateTime = 1:0.41-1.el5
> 
> and the rpmforge one shows:
> 
> perl-DateTime = 0.42-1.el5.rf
> 
> So yum would like to replace this one because of the '1:', I presume.
> I'm not even sure what the '1:' indicates.

looks like epel's pkg inherited an epoch, so rpmforge's package will likely
need to use Epoch: 1 as well.

> Also, the rpmforge packaging has split the locale and timezone stuff
> into separate packages, whereas the EPEL one hasn't, and this causes
> more conflicts for yum.
> 
> Any ideas on how to proceed?

Contact epel maintainer requesting a similar or at least compatible pkg
split (potentially with some judicious Obsoletes/Provides).  Likewise with
rpmforge... compatibility is a 2-way street after all.

-- Rex