Why do we need FC version attached to the package name?

[Jussi Lehtola]

On Sun, 2009-06-21 at 17:14 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> > The package has been rebuilt with a newer gcc and a newer rpm
> > (stringer hash) so no its not the same package with a different name.
> 
> Yes, and let me add that the ".fc10" and ".fc11" (the dist-tag) is part
> of the package "Release" value not just the package file name.
> That makes the .fc11 package "newer than" the .fc10 package
> in RPM's view, which is particularly important if internally
> it really differs from the .fc10 build (e.g. in terms of compiler
> generated code, library versions, dependencies).

Exactly: say that in Fedora 10 package foo-1.0-1 is built against
libbar.so.4, but in Fedora 11 it's built against libbar.so.5 then you
might end up in trouble with a distribution upgrade if libbar.so.4
doesn't exist in the new distribution. [I don't know whether yum is
capable of handling this.]

When you add the distro version into the release tag, you have
foo-1.0-1.fc10 in Fedora 10 and foo-1.0-1.fc11 in Fedora 11, then the
Fedora 11 version will automatically replace the Fedora 10 version.

PS. I am not aware of any distribution without some kind of a frozen
release system - even the source based distros such as Gentoo have
stabilized sets of the base components.
-- 
Jussi Lehtola
Fedora Project Contributor
jussilehtola at fedoraproject.org