Package naming conflicts (was: Re: sound problems)

[Michael Schwendt]

Could you please reply only to the list instead of sending a copy
via Cc?

On Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:33:57 -0300, Horst wrote:

> > > This will even help Fedora, as the reason Debian/Mandriva introduced
> > > them was for being able to cope with tons of packages when a
> > > dependency does an sobump.
> 
> > Without a doubt. If done properly, it would fix the poor broken deps
> > caused by sudden/unexpected soname bumps.
> 
> No, it doesn't. It just forces carrying outdated junk around forever,

It doesn't do that. It's similar to our compat-* packages. Once all
dependencies build'n'work fine with the latest library, the old
parallel installable releases can be obsoleted (= removed).

On the contrary, an ABI/API-incompatible library upgrade in the middle
of a stable Fedora release forces packagers (and upstream maintainers)
to spend extra time on [often unnecessary] maintenance tasks just to
move closer to the bleeding edge.

> stuff
> that needs the same care as new packages (and tending for old code is more
> work, and unexciting work at that). Better do a clean cut with the past;

This can be done prior to the next release of Fedora. This is what
Rawhide is for.

> if
> some dependencies can't be updated for now, so be it. yum is currently able
> to handle this scenario just fine.

So? Here, by default, it runs into a fatal error condition and throws
an error message, which confuses many (many!) users. And --skip-broken
(even if enabled by default) is no cure either.