Another small important detail I learned today about epoch numbers in package names. Or rather: I was forced to understand what I already saw for years but never thought about. RedHat's package manager yum (and by that extent also dnf and rpm) treat a non-specified epoch number as 0. This confused me today as a specified package couldn't be found. And an dnf info packagename didn't show the Epoch: field. Despite the package name clearly including an epoch version of 0. Turns out this is document in RedHat Enterprise Linux 9: Advanced Topics - 6.3.1. The Epoch directive and Debian treats and Epoch number of 0 in the exact same way. RedHat says: The Epoch directive enables to define weighted dependencies based on version numbers. If this directive is not listed in the RPM spec file, the Epoch directive is not set at all. This is contrary to common belief that not setting Epoch results in an Epoch of 0. However, the dnf utility treats an unset Epoch as the same as an Epoch of 0 for the…
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