Hi all,

I have put together rpm's for OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 for CentOS/RHEL 5. Everything works as expected.

I also created "ooo3-base", virtual rpm package that depends on all needed rpm's, so that installation is much easier. This is especially necessary because I additionally created "ooo3-en-US" "ooo3-SR" and "ooo3-SH" for separate language files, and they depend on "ooo3-base" so everything installs fine if there is no OpenOffice.org version 2(.3.0). Problem arises when there is already older OpenOffice.org installed (version 2.3.0), since my rpm's do not have Obsoletes set.

I am now trying to add Obsoletes to ooo3-base pockage, but there are problems.

For now, I was adding lines like this:

Obsoletes: openoffice.org-core < 1:3.0.0

But when trying to install that package, it only says something like "replacing" obsolete packages, but it does not select old packages for removal.

Is this normal behavior, or is there a way to remove them at the same time I am installing new packages?

I wonder: how does the .spec from an older OOo version .src.rpm do things?

Fedora 10 version creates rpm by rpm with "Obsolete:" lines for each packet. When I add all those Openoffice.org v2 files with "Obsolete:" to ooo3-base, it runs, but it does not remove old packages, but it looks like it integrates then (I currently do not have that setup in spec so I can not post you exact install log). I am afraid that not actually removing old packages could leave files from old packages on the system and interfere with OpenOffice.org 3.x.

Best option for me would be to remove packages before the installation of new version begins, but I do not know how to make this happen. Google haven't shown me anything usable (there was A LOT of unrelated junk).

Current setup of ooo3-base file is no Obsoletes what so ever, just to write warning in description to remove old version first. This can also work since few packages from new set have conflicting files with the old set so installing version 3 over version 2 does not work without use of force.

Last time I read a discussion about %obsolete on the rpm mailing list there was lots of talk about what is required to make it happen properly from a RPMDB point of view regarding intricacies like ordering, dependencies and such. I can't remember what the suggestions were but I maybe you would not want to install OOo by starting with ooo3-base but from a meta package instead? (I thought OOo RPMs as distributed by OOo themselves already used one.) Just like you don't install X11/Xorg drivers but the X11/Xorg installation draws in the driver meta package?

That said since version 2 OOo does no longer use its own installer but builds RPMs so I'm thinking they would have already discussed upgrading (as in not reinventing the wheel). Maybe the OOo site, the installation or specifications subprojects or related mailing list archives could tell. Else I wonder what Fedora says in its RPM building guidelines about obsoleting "the right way"...