[Rpm-maint] Idea of the day

[Florian Festi]

Hi!

While discussing updates and version-in-package-names issues (related to
a programming language that shall not be named) we came up with the
following (completely not thought through) idea:

Offer a special character for separating the version number within the
package name from the "real" name e.g. "@". While updates would continue
to work as they do right now and foo at 1-1.2.3 is only do be updated by
other foo at 1 versions the "@" has the following effects:

Whenever you query for or address a package (name) you also match the
part before the @. So you could do rpm -e foo-1.2.3 which would remove
foo at 1-1.2.3

Whenever the name or NVR is printed in the UI the part after the @ is
omitted and the matching part of the number is highlighted if possible:
foo-*1*.2.3

May be even automatically add a Provide for the part before the @.


Benefit of the idea: All "real" operation just keep working as they used
to. We have the wanted behaviour on the UI of not showing the version
number twice and matching the name without the version number.

This feature could also be used for library packages.


Florian