rpm package renames
Stuart Children
stuart at terminus.co.uk
Wed May 26 09:47:41 UTC 2004
Hi
Suppose I have a package foo, which I need to rename to bar (to better fit
package naming guidelines, or for trademark reasons say). What exact magic
do I need in my bar spec file to ensure upgrades go smoothly? "Obsoletes:
foo" obviously. I'm guessing probably also restricting it to <= the last
version released as foo to be paranoid - is that definitely
necessary/suggested?
I've seen some notes saying that Obsoletes should be paired with Provides.
In what situations should one do that? If I'm certain foo is not
explicitely Required by any other packages, can I safely skip it?
Whilst playing around I noticed that if the versions of foo and bar are
the same (which in this case they won't be, but consider bar being a whole
new project that is designed to replace foo) then foo is not removed
when upgrading to bar. Which confused the hell out of me for a while
last night (that and the difference installing vs upgrading, but I can
understand that). :)
I can't find any definite guidelines or indeed explainations of exactly
how rpm treats Obsoletes. This is very frustrating, and lack of
documentation is surely a reason why packaging is sometimes considered a
black art when it should be quite accessible to developers.
Anyway, if people can come up with some guidelines here then perhaps they
could be added to the following pages:
http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/developers-guide/ch-rpm-building.html
http://www.fedora.us/wiki/PackagingHints
PS: Before I forget, is there an easy way to find out who is supposed to
be maintaining a particular package in the fedora.us repository?
TIA
--
Stuart
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