Explicit requires vs. auto library requires, and fc3/devel versioning

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Sun, 2005-03-20 at 11:56 -0500, Owen Taylor wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-03-20 at 07:34 -0800, Jeff Sheltren wrote:
> > I have two (hopefully quick) questions which both refer to a bugzilla entry:
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=151581
> > 
> > First, according to the old Fedora.us packaging documentation for using
> > requires ( http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HOWTOUseRequires ), it is enough to
> > rely upon rpm to find the library required instead of listing a specific
> > requires.  Is this still valid for packages in extras?  In this case, I
> > don't have a 'Requires: recode', but rpm picks up the dependency for
> > librecode.so.0.  This works great for me (doing a yum install fortune-mod
> > ends up grabbing recode as a dependency and everything gets installed
> > happily), but is apt-get not able to follow dependencies in that manner?  If
> > so, is it something we need to worry about?
> 
> If apt-get can't follow file dependencies, it isn't going to work with
> the majority of RPMs out there. (I have no idea whether it can or not.)
It can, does and has done for ages.

Though I recall having seen the problems Ville referred to, in early
stages of apt-rpms, I haven't seen them for several years.

> > Second, I'm a bit confused by Michael's comment:
> > ----------
> > But the fortune-mod packages released into Fedora Extras Development have
> > the same version-release as those for Fedora Extras 3. That's a bug.
> > ----------
> > Which brings me to my question: how should releases differ between FC3 and
> > development?  Are we supposed to have that FC3/FC4 tag as part of the
> > release?  If so, is this *only* for the case where the FC3 version = FC4
> > version?
> 
> Apparently it doesn't matter how you do the versions as long as the FC4
> version is newer. But if you are doing development for FC4 then
> backporting to FC3, including the fc4 tag in all your devel branch
> version is a good way to make sure that you have a lower number
> available for fc3. (See my "Basic Questions" post for a specific
> scheme that works that way.)
+1 to your proposal.

FWIW: I had asked a very similar question several months ago wrt.
fedora.us and FC interaction, but nobody at RH seems to have considered
it worth thinking about, then.

Ralf