On disttags

[Rex Dieter]

Jeff Spaleta wrote:

> And you still have not addressed the issue of how to handle backported
> fixes. 

IMHO, The only reason dist_tags can possibly cause any sort of problems 
with backported fixes is dealing with rpm < 4.2 (or possibly rpm < 4.1 
where is incorrectly sorts numerics vs. alphas in version/release tags). 
  In the scope of *this* discussion, we're dealing only with non-buggy 
rpm versions, so Fedora Core can safely ignore those problems(*). 
Futher, in the lack of existing dist_tags, these problems go away.

So, given foo-1-3 (for fc3) and foo-1-4 (for fc4), an fc3 errata can use 
any of these safely:

If paranoid about upgrades to fc4, so foo-1-4 is *always* newer/greater:
foo-1-3.0.fc3 (my personal preference)
foo-1-3.fc3 (*just* adding dist_tag)
And by extension, a possible 2nd errata:
foo-1-3.1.fc3

Or to simpify things for the packager(s), and always use a single source 
(and yes, possibly pushing out useless updates on some platforms):
foo-1-5.%{dist_tag}

-- Rex

(*) Or possibly someone (RedHat, fedora.us, or fedoralegacy.org) can 
release an rpm errata to fix these issues as well.