Upcoming changes (in 1.4.1)

[Anders F Björklund]

Here's a list of the upcoming changes in Smart 1.4.1:

- Changes to RPM version comparison, @arch and :distepoch

Some distributions, like Unity 2011 and Mandriva 2011,
now append a "Distepoch" component to the traditional
Epoch, Version, Release (EVR) tuple. This needs to be
handled in the parsing code, even if not used by smart.

All version comparisons now need to use "vercmp" rather
than "strcmp", so that they account for these tuples.
There is a new helper function added called "checkver",
which compares two version strings for equality (bool).

- Recommends will now be installed by default, like apt

There are two settings: "install-recommends" (true) and
"install-suggests" (false) that can be used to change the
behaviour, if needed. These values affect the *parsing*,
so any change requires updating the cache - from files.

Everything still uses Requires, there are no "weak"
dependencies in the depsolving code that Smart uses.
The same goes for "Requires(missingok):" in RPM, but
those are already loaded so there's no big difference.

- File locking on (Open)Solaris need some special code

- The ARM "EABI" architecture wasn't properly detected

- Smart should show the original channel for a package

- The GUI needs a Preferences dialog, for the settings

Details, see https://launchpad.net/smart/+milestone/1.4.1

--anders