Why does smart want to downgrade perl?

[Raman Gupta]

Hello, I have been using smart on FC4 and really like it. However I've
run into this situation where smart wants to downgrade perl.  Based on
my repository setup, I don't believe this should be happening.

Basically, I have fedora-updates setup with priority 20. However, even
though updates has perl-3:5.8.6-22 (same as my local version) for some
reason smart insists on downgrading to perl-3:5.8.6-18. BTW, if I leave
the updates channel at the default priority, then for some reason I
don't get any new packages from updates, which is another problem I am
confused about (according to the FAQ, smart should pull in the latest
versions, so I shouldn't need the priority 20).

Below is the transcript -- I have also shown a query for mysql, which is
another package in updates and is working fine (smart is not trying to
downgrade it):

# smart --shell
Smart Package Manager 0.40 - Shell Mode
Loading cache...
Updating cache...

smart> update
...

smart> query --show-channels --show-priority perl
perl-3:5.8.6-15 at i386 {0} [os]
perl-3:5.8.6-16.fc4 at i386 {20} [updates]
perl-3:5.8.6-18 at i386 {20} [updates]
perl-3:5.8.6-22 at i386 {10} [rpm-db]
perl-3:5.8.6-22 at i386 {20} [updates]

smart> upgrade

Downgrading packages (1):
  perl-3:5.8.6-18 at i386

11.5MB of package files are needed. 4.3kB will be freed.

Confirm changes? (Y/n): n

smart> query --show-channels --show-priority mysql
mysql-4.1.11-2 at i386 {0} [os]
mysql-4.1.14-1.FC4.1 at i386 {20} [updates]
mysql-4.1.15-1.FC4.1 at i386 {20} [updates]
mysql-4.1.16-1.FC4.1 at i386 {20} [rpm-db, updates]


It is interesting to note that the updates channel has both the -18
package and the -22 package. It is also interesting to note that mysql
displays the latest package version as being in both rpm-db and updates
at the same priority whereas perl shows them separately.

Does anybody have any clue as to why this is occurring? There is no
explicit package priority set for perl.

Thanks,
Raman