package, package2, package3 naming-with-version exploit

[Adam Williamson]

On Thu, 2013-03-28 at 20:35 +0100, juanmabc wrote:

> - pkg-1.0.x installed (and with its own updates)
> - pkg-2.0.x installed (and with its own updates)
> note the difference, *point and cause of all here*, from
> - pkg-1.0.x
> - pkg2-2.0.x

That's a very trivial difference; it barely exists. The hyphen isn't
some kind of magical character for RPM, so the difference between 'pkg2'
and 'pkg-2' is entirely aesthetic.

The reason 'pkg' tends to be 'pkg' and not 'pkg-1' is simply that
packages are usually just introduced under their regular name, and this
situation only emerges when they become big successful packages then go
through a disruptive API change, and at that point, no-one wants to go
through the pain of doing a package rename review for 'pkg'. That's a
human thing more than it's a technical thing, and I'm not sure there's
some magic process change which can 'fix' it, and I'm not sure that
'fixing' it provides any significant benefit other than looking tidy in
pontificating emails. I mean, what's the actual problem caused by
'gnome-desktop' vs. 'gnome-desktop3'?
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net