On Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:52:13 +0100, Julian Sikorski wrote: > What is so wrong with using epoch anyway?
They are poisonous. ;) Whenever you deal with dependencies on packages that set an Epoch, you need to specify the Epoch explicitly also in the dependencies. And you need to verify all Epochs in all your dependencies regularly. Example: libfubar and libfubar-devel Epoch: 1 Version: 1.9.a foo Version: 2.0 BuildRequires: libfubar-devel >= 2.0 libfubar-devel-1.9.a will suffice, although it is not version 2.0, but due to the Epoch 1:1.9.a is > 2.0. In pkg foo, it should have been BuildRequires: libfubar-devel >= 1:2.0 with an explicit Epoch 1. Now image what happens next time when you need libfubar-devel >= 2.4 for run-time fixes and meanwhile the libfubar packager has increased the Epoch at least once. You would think that BuildRequires: libfubar-devel >= 1:2.4 is enough -- without checking the Epoch (which is specific to your rpms anyway!) painstakingly -- but again, libfubar-devel-2.3g would suffice, because Epoch is at 2 or higher already, so 2:2.3g > 1:2.4 and so on...
