Testing for package equality?

[J.B. Nicholson-Owens]

Tom Mitchell wrote:
> However yum and up2date do not understand this concept and will pull
> header and other information from all the resources I list as if they
> contained little (or nothing) in common.

Is there a hash in the header that yum could use to realize which packages
are the same?

I could see a situation where repositories you thought were the same diverge
for reasons beyond a user's control (repo A has been purchased by a new
corporation and the new manager decides to no longer carry video games, so
repo A stops carrying Frozen Bubble.  Meanwhile, repo B continues to carry
games as they have for the past 2 years, including Frozen Bubble).

Therefore, I think I would rather have this equality test at the package
level, not the repository level.  Hashes would work to implement this--if
you get meta data on a package and see two packages from two different
repositories with the same hash, you know they're the same package.