On Wed, 2005-02-23 at 15:22 -0500, Scott Lawrence wrote:
Fedora Core inludes w3c-libwww.rpm, but that version does not include compilation with openssl. For lots of good reasons, we need the openssl, so we build a version of the w3c-libwww.rpm that has it enabled; that's the only difference.
In this case, this is a bug in Fedora Core's w3c-libwww package. I can't think of a good reason for it not to depend on openssl, since it should be present on the vast majority of installs (and isn't an unreasonable dependency when installing w3c-libwww).
In any event, this seems to me to raise a general issue of how to cope with the fact that some packages can be built in (potentially overlapping) variants. How can we make all of the variants available and express what each provides so that tools like yum can make the correct choice?
One of the hard and fast rules I intend to implement is that Fedora Extras packages cannot duplicate existing packages in Fedora Core.
Please open a bug against bugzilla.redhat.com to get w3c-libwww to start building with ssl enabled, and by FC4, this issue should be moot. :)
Otherwise we either start hacking conflict overrides, or we end up with rpms that have renamed libraries, effectively doubling the number of libraries on a system.
The Red Hat package maintainers are willing to fix issues in their Core packages, and Fedora moves fast enough that it should never be a problem for more than 6 months. (And if the maintainers aren't willing, me and Greg can start beating them over the head with the cluestick)
~spot --- Tom "spot" Callaway: Red Hat Sales Engineer || GPG Fingerprint: 93054260 Fedora Extras Steering Committee Member (RPM Standards and Practices) Aurora Linux Project Leader: http://auroralinux.org Lemurs, llamas, and sparcs, oh my!