%{?dist} and changelog

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Tue, 2006-01-24 at 13:22 +0900, Warren Togami wrote:
> http://cvs.fedora.redhat.com/viewcvs/*checkout*/devel/libevent/libevent.spec?root=extras&rev=1.2
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> This is just a reminder to please do not include the %{?dist} suffix in 
> the version field within a package %changelog like in this example 
> package.

How do you want us to avoid it in cases, where you have to branch
releases/"walk side ways" release-wise?

The usual work-around would be to append a suffix to end of the release
tag, e.g. xxx-3-4%{dist}.1 (cf. below).

>   It is misleading when the package is built in the future on 
> newer distributions.  The release number(s) prior to the dist tag should 
> be sufficient within your %changelog.

Sorry, but this doesn't apply.

Example: Given a package with a long history:

FC3: 1-1.fc3 
     -> 1-2.fc3
FC4: -> 1-2.fc4
FC5: -> 1-2.fc5

Now modular was introduced to FC5, causing a cascade of rebuilds:
FC5:   -> 1-3.fc5
       -> 1-5.fc5
       -> 1-6.fc5

At this point, a packaging bug was discovered, only applying to FC < 5.
The maintainer chose to "fork" for FC < 5 i.e. to use 1-2%{dist}.1,
because 1.3%{dist} already had been used on "HEAD" (FC5):
FC3: 1-2.fc2.1
FC4: 1-2.fc4.1

How to handle this case in %changelog?

Ralf