[Rpm-maint] idea for new keyword: ObsoleteBy

[Seth Vidal]

On Thu, 3 Sep 2009, Stanislav Brabec wrote:

> Suppose that you have a custom package gimp-unstable-2.7, that is not
> known to your vendor system. You want to follow updates, but once
> gimp-2.8 appears, you want your package silently replace by a stable
> distro package.
>
> Or suppose that you created libfoo-mybranch-2.3, that contains an
> important feature. You know, that your feature is implemented in
> upstream version 2.4 and your libfoo-mybranch should be replaced by
> libfoo then.
>
> I think that for these purposes it would be nice to have reverse
> Obsoletes - package {this_package} tells, that once package defined by
> ObsoleteBy appears, solver will behave like if "Obsoletes:
> {this_package}" is placed into it.
>
> gimp-unstable.spec:
> Version:    2.7.1
> Provides:   gimp = %{version}
> ObsoleteBy: gimp >= 2.7.1
>
> libfoo-mybranch.spec:
> Version:    2.3
> Provides:   libfoo = %{version}
> ObsoleteBy: libfoo >= 2.4
>
> What do you think about such feature?

What does this get you that isn't already handled by 'Obsoletes'?

If you're introducing a pkg later why not put 'Obsoletes' in it?

-sv