Hi Stuart,
Just Obsoletes: should do just fine.
Personaly i do always use a Provides: Even if it's just as documentation of
the past ('this packages used to be called..') and who knows what weird
dependencies 3rd party rpm's have; So it's just good form. However if your
certain nothing ever depends on the package, ofcource it could be left out
(but unless the package was never released 'in the wild', how can you be
certain?)
To prevent the side by side install when they are the same version, a
Conflicts: tag should do the trick.. (Conflicts: foo)
ps, if your into the black arts of rpm packaging (or just have questions
like these), rpm-list(a)redhat.com is a more suitable list, and has a few
resident packaging experts on it..
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stuart Children" <stuart(a)terminus.co.uk>
To: <fedora-devel-list(a)redhat.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 11:47
Subject: rpm package renames
Hi
Suppose I have a package foo, which I need to rename to bar (to better fit
package naming guidelines, or for trademark reasons say). What exact magic
do I need in my bar spec file to ensure upgrades go smoothly? "Obsoletes:
foo" obviously. I'm guessing probably also restricting it to <= the last
version released as foo to be paranoid - is that definitely
necessary/suggested?
I've seen some notes saying that Obsoletes should be paired with Provides.
In what situations should one do that? If I'm certain foo is not
explicitely Required by any other packages, can I safely skip it?
Whilst playing around I noticed that if the versions of foo and bar are
the same (which in this case they won't be, but consider bar being a whole
new project that is designed to replace foo) then foo is not removed
when upgrading to bar. Which confused the hell out of me for a while
last night (that and the difference installing vs upgrading, but I can
understand that). :)
I can't find any definite guidelines or indeed explainations of exactly
how rpm treats Obsoletes. This is very frustrating, and lack of
documentation is surely a reason why packaging is sometimes considered a
black art when it should be quite accessible to developers.
Anyway, if people can come up with some guidelines here then perhaps they
could be added to the following pages:
http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/developers-guide/ch-rpm-building.html
http://www.fedora.us/wiki/PackagingHints
PS: Before I forget, is there an easy way to find out who is supposed to
be maintaining a particular package in the fedora.us repository?
TIA
--
Stuart
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