rpmlint and Obsoletes: loops

[Florian La Roche]

One item has just come up the last days within
FC-development: openssh has added to the "Obsoletes:"
lines also the corresponding "Provides:" lines.
End result is that this created an "Obsoletes loop"
where an older openssh-askpass-gnome package obsoletes
a current openssh-askpass and the current openssh-askpass
package also obsoletes openssh-askpass-gnome.
(In more detail this happened via the obsoletes/provides
"ssh-extras".)

This of course does not show up for FC-development where
only the newest packages are in the tree, but it does show
up if you take older repos together with FC-devel packages
(which is normally not a good mixture, but that is
another story).

While it is most times a good idea to add the "Provides:"
lines for all obsoletes as well, we should not just add them
to all of them. Especially not if nobody found them missing
for many years by now.

Something we should keep in mind if we now look more and more
at rpmlint and how it reviews rpm packages.

regards,

Florian La Roche