package, package2, package3 naming-with-version exploit

[Jan Zelený]

On 28. 3. 2013 at 08:31:22, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
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> On 03/28/2013 08:30 AM, Jan Zelený wrote:
> > On 28. 3. 2013 at 12:59:44, Vít Ondruch wrote:
> >> Dne 28.3.2013 12:09, Florian Festi napsal(a):
> >>> This is done to make life easier for package maintainers.
> >> 
> >> Sorry, you definitely not speak for me! This are just excuses.
> >> And I asked already several times to have some way to reliable
> >> support multiple version of packages without mangling their
> >> names.
> > 
> > Víťo, I certainly understand your frustration, as it comes from
> > talking about this topic over and over again. However Ruby
> > community is a *very* special case in this regard and I'd like to
> > treat it as such.
> > 
> > If you want, we can start a discussion here. But if we do, let's
> > keep the discussion strictly constructive and just about
> > *technical* problems. Let's not take this to design level of
> > things, as Ruby and Fedora are two completely different worlds that
> > will never be fully compatible by design. Therefore the final
> > solution (if there is any) has to be some sort of compromise.
> 
> It's not just Ruby that has these issues, though. To take a python
> example: Django. Most Django packages are built against a specific
> minor version of Django, and the Django upstream regularly breaks
> backwards compatibility with those minor releases.

gaaaah ... no comment ;-)


> It ends up requiring Fedora to carry multiple copies of python-django
> in the repo, usually versioning the older ones (so in the current
> situation, we have python-django and python-django14, with
> python-django referring to Django 1.5)

Ok, but you can't avoid that. Even if SW management stack could install 
multiple versions of a single package, you would still need to have them in 
the repo.

The only difference I can see is that instead of having two separate dist-git 
repos, there would be one with twice as many branches (one branch for every 
fedoraversion-packageversion), each branch having slight differences in spec 
file anyway. Or am I missing something?

Thanks
Jan