[Fedora-packaging] release of subpackage with version different from main rpm

Jindrich Novy jnovy at redhat.com
Sat Jan 5 08:54:30 UTC 2008


On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 09:08:44AM -0600, Rex Dieter wrote:
> Mamoru Tasaka wrote:
> 
> > I guess there are some packages of which subpackage rpms have versions 
> > which are different from those of the main rpm.
> > For example, on rawhide perl has 4:5.8.8-32.fc8 EVR and its subpackage
> > perl-ExtUtils-MakeMaker has 0:6.30-32.fc8 EVR.
> > 
> > On such case are there any policy for release number? For perl currently
> > the main perl rpm and its subpackages have the same release number.
> > However in other rpms the case may happen that only the version of 
> > main rpm will be bumped where the version of its subpackage won't change.
> > In that case usually we want to switch the release number of main rpm
> > to 1%{?dist}, however if its subpackage has different version the release
> > number of the subpackage usually can't be back to 1%{?dist}. How should
> > we treat this case?
> 
> imo, the simplest solutions for cases like this are:
> 1.  don't munge versions for subpkgs, ie, subpkg EVR = main pkg EVR
> 2. where different Versions are desired, make these a *completely
> separate* pkg, not just a sub-pkg.

None of these approaches are possible in some cases, say TeXLive. The
distribution consists of many independent parts, but as a distribution it has
one huge tarball. Following your suggestion would lead to have a couple of
separate packages containing full tarball from which only a particular
part which is packaged is ripped off, which is quite wasteful IMO.

In case of one package and many subpackages, the "subpkg EVR = main pkg EVR" is
also not possible, because each bit has a different version, because
they are developed independently.

Why to strictly avoid subpackages with a different NEVR than the main one? I can
imagine many of situations where it makes perfectly sense, the one I
described is one of these.

Jindrich

-- 
Jindrich Novy <jnovy at redhat.com>   http://people.redhat.com/jnovy/




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