Nothing really essential, but another thing for RPM 5.1: In OpenPKG the
"Release" tag follows a very strict semantic which actually means that
it has to be a steadily increasing version number for the packaging
within a particular OpenPKG distribution series. The "Version" on the
other hand is the upstream vendor version number and can be mostly
arbitrarily, including to jump or even go backwards (on packaging
downgrades). In OpenPKG CURRENT the "Release" tag simply is YYYYMMDD,
for other series it is M.N.K, etc.

In practice I'm regularily faced with the situation that I logically
need to assert just the "Release" of a package in a dependency instead
of "[E:]V-R" -- mainly because I assert the packaging itself and not
the stuff which is packaged. In those scenarious I do not care about
the version at all. But because the version is *NOT* guarrantied to
steadily increase, a dependency like "N >= V-R" is problematic: although
if R increases, if V decreases the dependency fails (again). But RPM
AFAIK doesn't support something like "N >= *-R" or perhaps "release(N)
>= R". Additionally, the specification of "V" in "N >= V-R" is not just
problematic, it is also confusing after some longer time, because if one
sees the dependency again one thinks it is a dependency to a particular
version and no longer recognize from the dependency that it actually
logically was a "Release" assertion.

So, questions:

1. As of today can a "Release" be asserted in a dependency at all?
   (I think: "no")

2. What would be the best syntax?
   (I think "N >= *-R" is very natural and "release(N) >= R" would be
   also acceptable and is certainly what Jeff will recommend)

                                       Ralf S. Engelschall
                                       rse@engelschall.com
                                       www.engelschall.com