Re: Re: APT and Versioned Obsoletes

Hello folks!

> Yes, that's newer rpms do have this nice "feature" that effectively
> turn any versioned Provides to a versioned Obsoletes, e.g.
> 
> Provides: foo = bar implies Obsoletes: foo <= bar

That's a big surprise to me as well.

> Why this was defined as a wanted features, I don't know, it looks
> quite broken to me, as there are valid cases, where a Provides should
> not imply an Obsoletes, like in the case of allowing multiple versions
> of the same package to exist. :(

It looks broken to me as well. Using Provides and Obsoletes together
was always an option, if that was the intent.

[...]
> Wrt apt: It would be nice if apt were aware about the fact of implicit
> Obsoletes for rpm >=  4.2.1 (?) and display that this package
> will be removed. It has bitten quite a lot of folks :(

These are considered upgrades anyway, so I belive that based
on current APT practice, it won't show up even if we mark it
as an obsoletes relation. OTOH, I'm curious about what will
happen with dependencies on the package being removed. This
might be a reason for APT to follow the relation.

-- 
Gustavo Niemeyer
http://niemeyer.net