How is it determined if a package needs to be rebuilt for a newer Fedora version?

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Richard Shaw <hobbes1069 at gmail.com> said:
> I see regularly where new(er) users wonder why they see packages
> installed with dist tags from previous versions of Fedora.
> 
> I understand why this occurs but now that I've gotten into building
> some of my own packages I started to wonder how it is determined if a
> package needs to be rebuilt or not.
> 
> Do we rely on the package maintainer to make a call or is there some
> definitive way to test a package?

This would be more appropriate on fedora-devel (any follow-up questions
should go there).

Basically, you rebuild a package when there is a good reason to rebuild
it.  You've made packaging changes or you pulled in a new upstream
version are the main reasons for a package maintainer to do it.
Sometimes it'll get rebuilt (or you'll need to submit a rebuild) when
dependencies change (such as a shared library soname bump).

Some Fedora releases will go through a "mass-rebuild", where every
package gets rebuilt.  This is only done when there's a good distro-wide
reason, such as RPM upgrades that change the package format or gcc
upgrades that significantly affect optimization/code security/etc.

You should never rebuild just to see the release number and/or distro
tag change.
-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.