[devel] Re dependencies beginning with a dot character

[devel] Re dependencies beginning with a dot character

[Alexey Tourbin]

Regarding
> Revert "Add macro to allow dependencies beginning with a dot character in spec file"
> These odd dependencies are no longer generated.
http://git.altlinux.org/gears/r/rpm-build.git?a=commitdiff;h=f438f6b5

On the balance, those odd dependencies have one distinct advantage:
they can be resolved in a single primitive op, that is, they evade
full-blown version parsing, which in turn invokes malloc etc. Some
time ago I didn't understand the issue; this can still be seen in the
ocaml-runtime package:

$ rpm -q --provides ocaml-runtime
ocaml-runtime = 4.07
ocaml-runtime = 4.07.1-alt2

So "ocaml-runtime = 4.07" is used as a base version in all dependent
packages. Today I would use "ocaml-runtime-4.07" instead.

On the other hand, there is an optimization (at least in apt-rpm)
which tries strcmp before succumbing to the vercmp machinery. You
better make sure the opitimization still works. In other words, the
version used in Requires and Provides (for subpackage dependencies)
must match exactly.