[devel] Fwd: meaning of -alt<n> in RPM names?

["Stanislav Ievlev" <inger@altlinux.org>]

Вот такое интересное письмо ;)

Наверное было бы неплохо иметь более чёткое policy с меньшим
количеством вариантов cуффиксов, причём и на русском и на английском
языках, а то со стороны действительно сложно разобраться ;)

---------- Forwarded message ----------

 I'd like to understand the naming conventions of the ALT Linux packages
 a bit better.  I see that they typically end with -alt<n>, where <n> is
 some small integer, but I don't see any rationale or pattern to which
 numbers go with which packages.  For instance:

    $ rpm -q -a | grep kernel- | sort
    kernel-headers-common-1.1.9-alt1
    kernel-headers-modules-ovz-smp-2.6.18-alt14
    kernel-headers-ovz-smp-2.6.18-alt14
    kernel-image-ovz-smp-2.6.18-alt14
    kernel-image-std-smp-2.6.18-alt6
    kernel-modules-atl1-ovz-smp-1.0.41.0-alt1.132626.14
    kernel-modules-atl1-std-smp-1.0.41.0-alt1.132626.6
    kernel-source-2.6.18-1.0.0-alt1

 Here, we have kernel-image-std-smp-2.6.18-alt6 and
 kernel-image-ovz-smp-2.6.18-alt14, which differ by "std" and "ovz",
 whatever those mean.  But they also differ by "-alt6" and "-alt14".  Why
 6 and 14?

 Other packages have a more complicated suffix: alt1.132626.6 or
 alt1.132626.14.  In that case the ".6" and the ".14" seem to correspond
 to the "alt6" and "alt14", and the "alt1" part isn't especially
 relevant.

 In the case of the files installed by
kernel-headers-modules-ovz-smp-2.6.18-alt14,
 we have this:

    $ ls -l /usr/src/
    total 12
    drwxrwxrwx 4 root root 4096 Apr 24 10:39 RPM
    drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Apr 24 07:09 kernel
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   26 May  1 16:56 linux-2.6.18-ovz-smp ->
linux-2.6.18-ovz-smp-alt14
    drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 May  1 16:56 linux-2.6.18-ovz-smp-alt14

 So for some reason this package provides names with and without the
 -alt14, even though the -alt14 is burned into uname -r:

    $ uname -r
    2.6.18-ovz-smp-alt14

 If there's some (English) document you can point me to that explains the
 naming scheme, I'd be happy to read it.

 Thanks,

 David Sanderson (dsanderson@panasas.com)