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

[Panu Matilainen]

On Fri, 2006-05-26 at 20:32 +0200, Axel Thimm wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> ATrpms' buildsystem is based on the latest released rpm & apt
> versions, e.g. rpm-4.4.2 (inside and outside the chroots) and now
> apt-0.5.15lorg3.1.
> 
> For the chroot mentioned in the Summary the new apt miscalculates
> epochs. For example:
> 
> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
>   rpm-build.32bit: Depends: perl (>= 5.006001)
> 
> rpm-build requires 5.006001 and perl offers 1:5.6.1-36.1.73, so it
> looks like the epoch was dropped.
> 
> I think this might be a promoteepoch handling bug. All these three
> have promoteepoch turned on [and need it turned on :/].

I don't think it's possible to emulate the rpm < 4.2.1 epoch mess with
rpm 4.4.2, promoteepoch or not. Repomd (well, createrepo) makes the
situation even worse because it lies about non-existing epochs - there's
no way to make even native rpm < 4.2.1 work with repomd without using a
patched createrepo (see this thread:
http://lists.laiskiainen.org/pipermail/apt-rpm-laiskiainen.org/2006-April/000024.html)

It would of course be possible to make some of the things like stripping
of zero epochs (forced by repomd / createrepo over all repository types)
runtime configurable instead of being build-time dependant on rpm
version but the basic problem is not solvable: no matter what tweaks you
do, apt uses rpmlib it was built against for dependency/version
comparisons. If mixing and matching the versions has worked until now it
has been more luck than anything else I'm afraid.

If the attached patch with -o RPM::HideZeroEpoch=false set for rhl <= 9
makes it work, I'll include it but I don't think it'll solve the whole
problem.

	- Panu -
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