Disttag for Fedora 7 and beyond

[Axel Thimm]

On Fri, Jan 05, 2007 at 09:20:08PM +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Jan 2007 20:32:45 +0100, Axel Thimm wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Jan 05, 2007 at 08:05:24PM +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> > > On Fri, 5 Jan 2007 19:09:00 +0100, Axel Thimm wrote:
> > > > > > and the next update needed at least 23:3.0.  E.g. the epoch
> > > > > > inflation everywhere make it mandatory to start checking all your
> > > > > > versioned BRs and
> > > > > 
> > > > > Versioned BRs are not affected, since the RPM Epoch never specifies an
> > > > > API version.
> > > > 
> > > > What makes you say this? How about epoch of the perl package itself?
> > > 
> > > It is specific to the RPM package, not defined by Perl at all.
> > > 
> > > > They very much define the ABI/API in this case by themselves.
> > > 
> > > There is no Epoch in Perl's versioning scheme. Not in the old one,
> > > and not in the new one either.
> > 
> > Ehem, perl itself is currently at epoch 4.
> 
> Perl itself isn't, the RPM package in FC6 is "perl <= 4:5.8.8".

Exactly, and we're talking about package dependencies and how the ugly
epoch is needed for expressing the desired API/ABI in BuildRequires.

> > Any package that needs to define that it needs a specific range of
> > perl ABI/API to work with/build against needs to know the
> > version-epoch mapping history of perl or to reply on artificially
> > virtual provides.
> 
> You build against a single target. In FC6 it's Perl v5.8.8.  Its API/ABI
> is defined by its version and in detail by a lot of stuff in the
> "Provides". The Epoch of the RPM package has nothing to do with
> that.

You are promoting to tailor specfiles against target
releases. This is a wrong thing to do for many things, for one I want
to keep the same specfile across different releases (*and*
distributions like Fedora <-> RHEL specfile sharing). Removing all
versioning in specfiles because "we know" fcN has foo version XYZ
leads to broken and low-quality specfiles.

> > > Why do you want to add Epochs to versioned Perl dependencies?
> > 
> > I don't, but if there are such I have to. Say for example that xmltv
> > depends on perl(Lingua::Preferred) >= 0.2.4.  If perl-Lingua-Preferred
> > had an epoch the above check would need to get this epoch added and
> > properly maintained by humans or machines.
> 
> Why? You want 'perl(Lingua::Preferred) >= 0.2.4', and either your
> build/target environment provides this version or not.

And it may even provide it with a lower version and a higher epoch, so
my version requirements go banana.

Epoch bad.
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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