disabling compatibility checks

[Edward Peschko]

All,

I'm having a very difficult time upgrading my system with packages
that depend on old, decrepit packages (eg. openssl-0.9.7a).

The issue? I compile new ones with rpmbuild, and when I try to install
them, I find out that there are several packages that depend on the
old version of the packages I'm compiling. Hence it blocks any new
ones from being installed - unless I uninstall everything that they
are dependent on first.

This can get really ugly, fast. What I'd like, instead, is the ability
to go ahead and install newer versions without care as to what
packages they 'break', knowing that I will compile newer versions of
those packages in future using the new prereqs.

Is there any way of possibly doing this, or am I stuck disentangling
everything before I'm able to do anything?

Ed

(ps - also, I've been digging around in the fedora BuildRequires, and
for the life of me, I can't figure out exactly HOW the hierarchy
works. For example - glew BuildRequires libGLU-devel. libGLU-devel is
provided by mason, which - you guessed it - BuildRequires glew. WTH!??
Is there an expert - or an external doc which describes the exact
build order for the fedora packages?
)