0.5.15lorg3.1 loses epochs on rh7.3/rh8.0/rh9 (promoteepoch?)

[Dag Wieers]

On Tue, 8 Aug 2006, Panu Matilainen wrote:

> Dag Wieers wrote:
> > On Tue, 8 Aug 2006, Panu Matilainen wrote:
> >
> >> On Tue, 8 Aug 2006, Axel Thimm wrote:
> >>
> >> >   In this prehistoric time it was unceivable that a package would
> >> >   have an epoch of "0". A missing epoch was indeed a missing epoch
> >> >   and nothing more or less. Unepoched dependencies and
> >> >   rpm-comparisons had a sick algorithm which depended on the package
> >> >   being installed or not.
> >> >
> >> >   BUT:
> >> >
> >> >   There were no explicit zero-epoch packages, neither were there
> >> >   explicit zero-epoch in dependencies.
> >>
> >> Yes, but createrepo injects artificial zero epochs *everywhere*, and
> >> that's the sole reason for this madness. You need to use createrepo -n
> >> switch for repositories requiring promoteepoch behavior, that way it
> >> doesn't add the false epochs.
> >
> > Are there any plans to do the right thing in createrepo and make a
> > distinction between epoch (none) and epoch 0. Are the Yum and Smart
> > developers interested to fix their software to understand the difference ?
> 
> Considering the "enthusiasm" I received when raising the zero-vs-no epoch
> issue on metadata list back in May, and that neither repomd-capable yum
> nor smart even run on systems from the promoteepoch days, I don't think
> they're interested at all. And I can hardly blame them...

A better reason for us not to worry and make -n the default in createrepo. 
No recent package should break Yum or Smart, right ? :)


> Apt-rpm *can* now (after quite a bit of pain) support repomd on those
> legacy systems as long as some care is taken when creating the repository,
> and I'd rather leave it at that. Let the sleeping dogs lie, ok? :)

I share your concern, but it is not trivial for people to understand the 
issues while we can resolve it for good.

My problem with it is that for a tool like Yam, I'm now pretty much forced 
to add another switch to Yam that people have to configure depending on 
the distribution they add. It's almost impossible to detect (unless I 
inspect every package and/or match the distribution name against a list of 
alternative namings and/or check for an RPM version in the repositories 
and assume that's what they're using).

What's even more, if they're using their old distribution with a recent 
RPM (like atrpms) that breaks everything again. So there's no good way to 
support it and one has to have a blind faith in the setup of the 
repository and all its clients that are using it (wrt rpm version).

While all it requires is to have Yum and Smart fix it (maybe even only 
when it pops up which may never occur).

Maybe I have to add -n to the createrepo options of Yam and when it breaks 
dive into the Yum/Smart code to patch it the best I can and send that ?

We know it is technically the best thing to do, right ?

Kind regards,
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]