[Fedora-packaging] Package rename breakage - wat do?

T.C. Hollingsworth tchollingsworth at gmail.com
Thu May 2 07:38:28 UTC 2013


Someone recently experienced a little breakage related to a package
rename, and I'm not sure about the best strategy to resolve it.

Upstream finally got around to unbundling a cookie handling library
from two unrelated npm packages (tobi and request).  We had previously
split it off in Fedora before, but needed to rename the package and
move it into its final home, so the directory under
/usr/lib/node_modules changed.  While I shipped an updated
nodejs-request along with the new nodejs-cookie-jar package in the
same Bodhi update, it's possible to update to nodejs-cookie-jar (which
Obsolotes/Provides the old unbundled package) without updating
nodejs-request. This will of course will break request since it looks
for it under the old, temporary name.

So, should we:
1. provide a compatibility symlink so older versions of
    nodejs-request aren't broken at all

2. add Conflicts to nodejs-cookie-jar specifiying the older versions
    of nodejs-request that it will break

3. do nothing; if you install only part of a single bodhi update and
    it breaks you get to keep both pieces

Both 1 or 2 are ugly in their own way, and 3 might be technically
correct but doesn't seem very nice, so I'm not sure how to proceed.

Thanks in advance for suggestions!
-T.C.


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