[CentOS-devel] Confusing package versioning
Dag Wieers
dag at wieers.com
Thu May 5 11:17:23 UTC 2011
On Thu, 5 May 2011, Jean-Marc Liger wrote:
> Le 05/05/11 11:59, Dag Wieers a écrit :
>> 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.
>
> The most important thing is RHEL5_X now sligthly differs with RHEL5_Y, and
> this may affect compatibility, like with the last mod_nss release.
> So I have an interest to immediatly visualise that my foo package, modified
> by CentOS, was rebuilt on el5_X rather than el5_Y.
I know, the CentOS developers are simply ignoring the relevance of this.
It seems to be their new credo.
--
-- 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]
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