[Fedora-packaging] Guidelines and epochs

Fernando Nasser fnasser at redhat.com
Mon Jan 8 15:33:51 UTC 2007


Michael Schwendt wrote:
> 
> Better would be to keep Epoch out of explicit versioned dependencies
> completely and rely on Epoch-less "Provides". Example: Instead of doing
> "BuildRequires: gtk+-devel >= 1:1.2.10" (notice the Epoch) one would do
> "BuildRequires: gtk+(api) >= 1.2.10" and gtk+-devel would "Provides:
> gtk+(abi) = %{version}" regardless of its"Epoch: 1" in the package.
> The Epoch would continue to aid package resolvers.
> 

This is an interesting concept: use a virtual provides to avoid 
referring to the Epoch of the package, and yet the Epock will displace 
old generation ones.

I wonder if this is possible or convenient in all cases.  We may end up 
with some ugly virtual provide names in some cases.  But I like the idea 
in general -- people tend to forget the "1:" prefix.

Regards,
Fernando




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