how does rpm install choose among multiple versions of same package

[William Hooper]

David Wolinski said:
[snip]
> I suspect that when multiple versions (or releases) of the same package
> name are given as arguments to rpm install, and when these packages
> contain conflicting files, rpm install will:
>
>   - install nothing
>         IF the packages are not listed in order of increasing
> version/release
>
>   - install only the package with the greatest version/release
>         IF the packages are listed in order of increasing version/release
>
> Can someone confirm/refute this?

That's what your testing looks like.

>  I'm asking because I often like to
> download the entire directory of package updates, e.g. from
> http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/1/i386/ ,
> onto my local machine, and then issue the appropriate rpm command to
> install or update them.  But often an updated package is offered with
> multiple releases (perhaps there can be multiple versions too), leading to
> the situation I described above, where rpm's behavior depends on the order
> that I list the packages to it.

If you want to do that you really need to look into a dep-solver.  I know
that yum and up2date support "directory of RPMs", and I'm pretty sure apt
does, too.  If you have multiple machines, just share your downloaded
directory with apache so they can use it via http.

-- 
William Hooper