Wow.

[john wendel]

Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Alan Evans <ame.fedora <at> gmail.com> writes:
>> It's just that in this case, I didn't expect updating subversion to
>> pull in a new version of openoffice! And sendmail???
> 
> If packages A and B both depend on library L and if Rawhide has a newer version 
> of L with a different soname major version (the number which indicates which 
> versions of a library are binary-compatible with each other), then you cannot 
> update package A without updating B, even if A and B are otherwise completely 
> unrelated (because updating A drags in L which drags in the updated B because 
> the newer L is no longer compatible with the old B - dependencies work both 
> ways in this case). If L is a core system library, there can be a lot of 
> packages like B.
> 
>         Kevin Kofler
> 

Isn't it possible to have multiple versions of a library installed? This 
  would let you install A and L.new and keep B and L.old, and everything 
should be fine. Or am I just confused? Is this a limitation of RPM or 
just a problem with the way things get packaged?

Thanks,

John