[CentOS] Old and new package version numbers during RPM update

Mon Jun 29 15:10:09 UTC 2015
Gordon Messmer <gordon.messmer at gmail.com>

On 06/28/2015 05:11 PM, Anand Buddhdev wrote:
> My motivation for asking this
> question was for making an EPEL package that can work for most people
> without breaking their installations (especially if they have unattended
> yum updates, like with yum-cron).

Bear in mind that one of the reasons people use stable distributions 
like RHEL/CentOS is that what you are suggesting does not happen.  Major 
changes should not be made during a platforms support lifetime.

Postgresql is a good example for the best way to handle this.  RHEL 5 
was originally released with Postgresql 8.1.  When 8.4 was released, it 
had features that made it highly desirable, but it wasn't compatible 
with the existing data files.  The new version was released as 
postgresql84 so that admins who wanted it could upgrade manually, but 
the upgrade would not happen automatically.

Maybe the best thing to do is release knotdns2 and avoid surprising 
admins with changes they need to prepare for.