Release an rpm with a lower version than the existing one

Ralf Corsepius rc040203 at freenet.de
Fri Jul 12 06:59:11 UTC 2013


On 07/12/2013 08:35 AM, Alejandro Alvarez Ayllon wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Not so long ago I took over an rpm called dpm-dsi, being the released
> version 1.9.0.
> The release of that version was decided by upstream.
>
> However, now upstream has decided to deprecate 1.9.0 for the moment
> being, since they
> consider it not stable enough. And they want to release an 1.8.* version.
>
> So my question is: can I build and push to updates a lower version of an
> existing rpm,
> and overwrite the existing one?

There exist several alternatives:

a) If the current version "works sufficiently" (No major or user visible 
bugs present) and if an estimate time of arrival for the final upgrade 
can be gives, just "leaning back" and wait for upstream to catch up, 
could be possible.

b) Apply rpm's "Epoch:", i.e. add an Epoch: tag and switch to using the 
lower version.
However, as "Epoch:" can cause massive troubles, e.g. they can never be 
removed from package and may introduce needs to be reflected to other 
packages (in particuliar BuildRequires and Requires), add them needs to 
very carefully thought about.

c) Temporarily use a "Fake version number", i.e. use 1.9.0 as rpm's 
Version:-tag, but package 1.8.x inside.
Unfortunatly, as version numbers often imply incompatible (ABI/API, 
feature) changes, this approach only is applicable in special cases.


I'd try to avoid b) whenever possible and try to resort to a) or c).
Unfortunately, b) is the only generally applicable solution. I don't 
know the package in question, so don't know which approach may best in 
your case.

Ralf



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