[CentOS] Why EPOCH ?

Fri Apr 8 14:18:29 UTC 2005
Johnny Hughes <mailing-lists at hughesjr.com>

On Fri, April 8, 2005 8:05 am, Petr \"Qaxi\" Klima said:
> Hello
>
> Does anybody know why is there so much packages with EPOCH cca?
>
> What is it good for?
>
> Petr Klima
>
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>

Epoch allows something to be an upgrade, even if the numerical version
number might be smaller.

This comes in handy for things like redhat-release ... since RH9 has a
higher version number for that package, than say RHEL3 .... so for the
redhat-release package for RHEL3 to be used instead of the one for RH9,
the epoch for RHEL3 would need to be larger than the one for RH9.

Except for .centos packages ... the upstream provider contols the epoch's
for CentOS ... we just build what they put out.

Same for the inconsistent naming ... el3, RHEL3, RHEL4, el4, etc.
-- 
Johnny Hughes
<http://www.HughesJR.com/>