I sent this over to the jpackage discussion list after a lengthy talk on IRC with a few Fedora and jpackage folks. So far there hasn't been any response other than some clarification of the rpm level drawback of using Provides. I thought I would toss it over here for some consideration on our side of things.

-------- Forwarded Message -------- From: Jesse Keating jkeating@redhat.com Reply-To: Discussion about JPackage project jpackage-discuss@zarb.org To: Discussion about JPackage project jpackage-discuss@zarb.org Subject: [JPackage-discuss] Moving jpp# to Provides: Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:05:01 -0400

In trying to find a compromise for jpackage packages in Fedora, we asked somebody from the jpackage side to provide a list of technical reasons why 'jpp#' needed to continue to be in the Release: string of an rpm.

Deepak provided us with http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DeepakBhole/ReasonsForKeepingJPP

In reviewing this and in the various arguments that have happened over the past few years surrounding the jpp vendor tag, I think I've struck upon something that just may work, at least work to the best of the requirements that I know of.

If we simply move the 'jpp#' part of the release string to a Provides: line in the spec file, here is what happens:

Exclusion of jpp* from a specific repo can still be done, since excludes work upon Provides too. It can be even more precise since currently a package with the name of foolalajpp4me would trigger the excludes and cause problems.

Deploying an entire jpackage stack is still possible. This is actually better accomplished at the yum repo level. yum --disablerepo=* --enablerepo=jpackage install * <-- that will install everything from jpackage, which I am understanding is the goal of this data point.

JPackage is still given credit as the package provides jpp, has the jpp changelogs, can have # comments regarding the jpackage interaction, summary, description, etc...

Grouping by jpp is still possible. yum --disablerepo=* --provides jpp*

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A current drawback to using jpp# is that the '#' can change, so using rpm itself becomes more tricky as rpm doesn't accept globs. That said, instead of doing jpp# you could just do 'jpp' and then rpm would be able to do things like:

rpm -q --whatprovides jpp

and well, whatever you want to do with that output.

However if you wanted to keep the versioning information, and still retain the ability to query on 'jpp', you could do:

Provides: jpp = #

or =< if that fills your needs. Since rpm does handle versioning in Provides you can still do rpm -q --whatprovides jpp and that will work.

Anyway I'm drifting a bit here, but I did want to start a conversation about the feasibility of using Provides to accomplish the listed goals rather than added characters in the release string.

I should also note that for best results, this Provides should be /added/ at both the jpackage and Fedora level. Removal of the jpp# information from release string technically only needs to be done at the Fedora level, it could remain at the jpackage level if so desired. The existence of "jpp#" can easily be controlled by a %{_dist} like tag in the release string. In jpackage build roots that value can expand to 'jpp#' and in Fedora buildroots that value would expand to '.fc#'. Since the other version-release parts should be used for version comparison it shouldn't much matter if jpp# is on the jpackage side and .fc# is on the Fedora side.

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