Long-term package versions (RHEL 5+ extended to 10 years until EOL)

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On 9 February 2012 09:47, Kevin Fenzi <kevin at scrye.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:42:06 +0100
> Xavier Bachelot <xavier at bachelot.org> wrote:
>

> Well, we could ship a package that removes them, or updates to the
> epel-release that conflicts, but I would not really like that
> personally. That forces things to be removed when it's not really
> giving people the choice of running the old thing still. (Perhaps
> internally where security doesn't matter so much to them).
>

How about the following:

XXX-replaceble (requires the latest package and installs that)
XXXversionnumber (the one that is packaged up.)

When a package is going to be abandoned (like I did with mediawiki114)
one should put a last package with the same contents as the last one
and a doc file (and change to %description) saying "This package is
dead and abandonned. It is no longer supported by upstream and/or
EPEL. You are free to use this package as long as you like, but you
are the sole responsible party." Or some such thing.

If you install XXX-replaceable it upgrades to the latest version as
needed. If you pull in the XXXversionnumber then you stay on that.




-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.
"The core skill of innovators is error recovery, not failure avoidance."
Randy Nelson, President of Pixar University.
"Years ago my mother used to say to me,... Elwood, you must be oh
so smart or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I
recommend pleasant. You may quote me."  —James Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd