Core Packages in Violation of the Fedora Naming Guidelines

[Jesse Keating]

On Wednesday 12 July 2006 15:18, Fernando Nasser wrote:
> First, as these packages are maintained upstream (not only the software,
> but the spec files and other SRPM bits) it is important to know in which
> EVR they are based on.  So, if you know that ......6jpp has a fix for
> some problem then if the one you have installed is .....6jpp<some fedora
> suffix) also has it.  That is what Nicholas was talking about.

This almost sounds like it should be in the name of the package instead.  
You're repackaging a package, but want to keep the upstream package 
information.  foo-6jpp-release-version.  Or if you _really_ have to, move it 
to the Version field, not the release field.  You're packaging the 6jpp 
VERSION of upstream.  The RELEASE is relative to what Red Hat does with it.  
Combine that with a Provides line and you're getting to sanity.  However even 
this is not really approved of in the naming guidelines, but could become one 
more case of non-numeric in version:

Name: foo
Version: 2.6.0.6jpp
Release: 1%{?dist}

Provides: foo = 2.6.0-6jpp

> Second, these packages are supposed to interoperate with other
> repositories (remember that only a fraction of Java packages is AOT
> built on Fedora), so preserving the upstream EVR string is fundamental
> for that to work.  This ensure no packages are unduly overwritten when
> the two repositories are enabled and that the latest version/releases
> prevail.

Provides: foo-2.6.0-6jpp  Then you can provide exactly what it is named 
upstream.

> All Java releases for RHEL have been done this way, by adding _NNrh to
> whatever the upstream JPackage EVR was with success.
> For Fedora 3 and Fedora package a _NNfc was adopted.  Gary Benson used
> to have a document describing it, which I thought lived in Fedora pages
> somewhere.
>
> There are hundreds of Java packages there, all rebuilt from upstream
> JPackage.org, shipped on Fedora for a couple of years with this EVR
> convention.
>
> W.r.t. the suffix added after the upstream EVR it does not really
> matter.  It can be anything people here want it to be.  We are updating
> the packages so we can use a new suffix as we get them from upstream JPP
> 1.7 if it is agreed upon quickly (time is running out).
>
> Should we change from the _NNfc convention?
> If so, now is my turn to ask: Why?

Just because it has been done this way doesn't make it right or clean.  There 
is no proper dist tag that separates a fc6 package from an fc5 package.  I 
ran into many instances where the FC-4 version was higher than the FC-5 
version and the devel version because the number before fc was bumped, but fc 
remained just fc.  This is just one of the issues.

-- 
Jesse Keating
Release Engineer: Fedora
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