removed FC version of OOo FC put it back

[James Wilkinson]

linuxmaillists at charter.net wrote:
> What is EPOCH?  Also why would autoupdate downgrade an 
> installed package?

Same question, really...

RPM always upgrades packages according to its idea of what the version
number is. So normally, 1.2 would be an upgrade of 1.1.

Sometimes, the packager wants things to go backwards. Usually, this is
because a new version has bugs, and the packager wants to revert to the
old version until things are fixed. Sometimes, it's because the package
has changed its numbering scheme (say, from a date-based scheme to a
release).

An "epoch" is a way of getting around this. It's like a super-version
number controlled by the packager, not the project. RPM insists that
epochs should always increase: a package with an epoch of 1 will always
be considered an upgrade to a package with an epoch of 0 or without an
epoch.

"Epoch" is English for "beginning of a new era in history; period marked
by notable events". It carries the overtones of "the old order has
passed away; this is the new order". Packages with an old epoch number
or without one are considered as belonging to that old order of things,
and no longer wanted, at least not if there is a new package
available...

(This also means that packagers have to be careful with the way they
name their packages. Normally, 1.0-rc1 would be considered to be "later"
to 1.0 by RPM, and hence an upgrade, whereas most programmers would
consider 1.0-rc1 to be a "release candidate" or "not quite there"
version of 1.0, and hence a downgrade. So you might have
package-1.0.0-rc1 and eventually package-1.0.1...)

Epochs are considered somewhat ugly, and are only used if there's no
other real alternative.

Hope this helps,

James.

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