RFC: Soname in rpm name

[Jeff Johnson]

Peter Backlund wrote:

>[snip]
>
>  
>
>>solution. I've searched a bit, and it seems that Mandrake and Debian both
>>have a policy to include the library soname in the package name :
>>http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/RpmHowToAdvanced#Library_policy
>>    
>>
>
>Unrelated, but I have to ask: what is the purpose of defining
>name/version/release like this:
>
>%define name    gtkmm
>%define version 1.2.4
>%define release 1mdk
>
>and then:
>
>Name:           %{name}
>Version:        %{version}
>Release:        %{release}
>
>I've seen it in a number of spec files. 
>  
>

The is the "Marc Ewing School of Packaging" style, adopted by GNOME, and 
one of
the first attempts at generating *.spec files automagically from 
scripts, that still flourishes
(like a milk weed does.

There is no reason whatsoever to use %define's for name/version/release 
however.

>And please no "Well, Mandrake sucks!".
>  
>
MDK is RHEL optimized for the i686!

Perhaps MDK would be willing to tak over hosting of the endless 
optimization discussion from
fedora-devel too.

73 de Jeff