[CentOS-devel] Confusing package versioning

Thu May 5 11:13:41 UTC 2011
Jean-Marc Liger <jean-marc.liger at siris.sorbonne.fr>

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.

JML