[Rpm-maint] [RFC/PATCH] comparisons without release

[Anssi Hannula]

Hi all!

Currently [1], if a package has
Provides: foo = 1.2
And another package has
Conflicts: foo < 1.2-1

The conflict does not trigger, as the releases will be ignored if one of the 
compared EVRs does not have it. (mdv bug #55810 [2])

Another similar case is:
A: Provides: foo = 1.2
B: Requires: foo = 1.2-2  (or >= 1.2-2)
The provides will match, which it IMHO should not be doing.

One solution that may seem obvious at first is making the comparison ignore 
releases only if neither has one. However, it would break a situation where
A: Provides: foo = 1.2-5
B: Requires: foo = 1.2

So, in this "requires/conflicts/etc has RPMSENSE_EQUAL on non-released EVR" 
case we actually do not want to compare the releases. So, if we restrict that 
case out, we get the attached patch rpm-nonreleased-compare.patch (which I 
based on [3] which comes from Jeff Johnson and Per Øyvind Karlsen, just 
removing cosmetic changes and changes relating to epoch handling).

However, in addition to changing the seemingly wrong behaviour of the first 
case described in the beginning of this message, the following noteworthy case 
is also changed:
A: Provides: foo = 1.2-1
B: Requires: foo > 1.2
Previously this didn't match, after the patch this matches. 
IMHO this change in behaviour is not wanted, so the attached patch rpm-
nonreleased-compare-2.patch restricts this case out as well.

Also, I attach rpm-compare-against-norelease3.patch (that I just came up with 
while writing this) which is AFAICS functionally equivalent to rpm-nonrelease-
compare-2.patch, but instead of modifying parseEVR() to return "" for 
nonexistent releases, it treats empty release of a provide as "" for a 
comparison in case the conflict/require/etc has a release.

I guess something like rpm-nonrelease-compare-2.patch or rpm-compare-against-
norelease3.patch should be applied (after proper testing, of course), unless 
we consider the original issues not-a-bug. I don't know which approach is 
preferable (or if neither is, or if the first patch with the caveat is), as 
I'm not too familiar with the rpm internals.

Please comment.

Note that all the attached patches are untested for now. The original patch 
[3] was tested with 4.6.0 at the time and it seemed to function expectedly 
(i.e. only with the caveat described above).

[1] didn't confirm with git master, but the code seems the same
[2] https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=55810
[3] http://kenobi.mandriva.com/~anssi/rpm-4.6.0-rpmvercmp-handle-missing-
values_1.patch

-- 
Anssi Hannula
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