[CentOS-devel] Confusing package versioning

[Dag Wieers]

On Wed, 4 May 2011, Johnny Hughes wrote:

> On 05/04/2011 10:45 AM, Dag Wieers wrote:
>> On Wed, 4 May 2011, Karanbir Singh wrote:
>>
>>> On 05/04/2011 02:35 PM, Ned Slider wrote:
>>>
>>>> In such cases, would editing the SPEC file release line be the lesser of
>>>> two evils?
>>>
>>> maybe but it would convey the wrong message.
>>
>> It depends on what message you want to send. Obviously Ned is confused by
>> how it is done now, and it makes it hard for people to match upstream
>> packages with CentOS packages.
>>
>> Despite the technical reasons, if the message is to confuse those users,
>> you are on the right track.
>>
> We have been doing this exactly the same for 8 years.

Since 8 years ago some things have changed. 8 years ago there was no 
%{dist} tag. When there was a disttag, it used to be a fixed tag (eg. 
.el5), not el5_2.


> There is no reason to reinvent the wheel here.
>
> It is very simple ...
>
> 1.  If we do not change a package, it will have the exact same dist tag
> as upstream.

So a %{dist} with .el5_2 stays .el5_2 on CentOS. No problem there.


> 2.  If we do change a package, then the dist tag will always be .el5.centos.

So a %{dist} with .el5_2.4 becomes .el5.centos.4, and there is no visual 
indication that both packages are related. Whereas .el5_2.centos.4 or 
.el5_2.4.centos would have been a more appropriate, and more correct (wrt. 
to depsolving) solution.

In the above example you may have noticed that .el5_2.4 > .el5.centos.4, 
while .el5 < .el5.centos


> This is not confusing, and is exactly what we have been doing since we
> stood up CentOS.

With the difference that things have changed in the meantime which makes 
it confusing that httpd-2.2.3-45.el5_6.1.src.rpm on RHEL5 becomes
httpd-2.2.3-45.el5.centos.1.src.rpm on CentOS5.


> What is confusing about this?

What is most confusing is that you do not appear to acknowledge what has 
been reported. I am not saying this is a grave problem, but you are 
ignoring the issue completely, as if Ned or me, or anyone else is wrong 
to even bring it up.

It reminds me a lot like the debate about the delay of CentOS 5.6. Nobody 
acknowledged that the delay has becoming longer the past years, nobody 
acknowledged that this is something the project is interested to improve, 
the messenger is wrong, the project is right. Discussion closed.

-- 
-- dag wieers, dag at wieers.com, http://dag.wieers.com/
-- dagit linux solutions, info at dagit.net, http://dagit.net/

[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]