Improve the way rpm decides what is newer

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:38:35 +0100, drago01 wrote:

> We should just use release epochs, people might hate them for whatever
> reasons, but they would easily prevent such issues from happing.

Vendor Epochs have been discussed years ago and have been rejected.
The normal %{epoch} in RPM Version Comparison is hidden and bad enough
already. We don't need another hidden "super-Epoch" that wins
version comparison even with that other %epoch.

There are times when you can push updates to current/old stable releases
but not newer/latest releases. E.g. temporary breakage of build requirements
or the buildsys target. All that's needed is an automated check, such as
the old upgradepathcheck script. Plus to put this onto the release criteria
list of items to check prior to a new final release of a dist as well as
when pushing updates. Violated upgrade paths should trigger an alarm bell.