Currently RPM "hides" the epoch number, creating user confusion and increasing resistance against using the epoch number. Would it be a good idea to start including the epoch number in the package file names?
IMHO as the majority of rpms for public consumption are created by build systems then changing the default _rpmfilename for rpm build would come as a suprise to external packagers and is not something that should be done. Epoch comparison, and tie-break comparisons (eg build time) are not important to users installing packages - they shouldn't have to care. I'd recommend improving documentation for packagers regarding epochs - (there is work ongoing to update Maximum RPM) and not suprising the users.
Epoch comparisons certainly *are* important to users!! Anytime a user sees rpm or up2date replace a package with one that has a lower version number (e.g. one of the Red Hat 6.2 errata packages -- I forget which one, maybe portmap or nfs-utils), it matters. Same goes for a user wondering why the h*** rpm -Uvh or -Fvh won't install a newer version of a package (in the case where the newer version is from a different packager and has a lower epoch). A real world example of the latter is trying to install Red Hat glibc packages on a Yellow Dog system. In other words, the only way for epochs to not matter to users is to not have them (and that's a cure worse than the disease). So, IMO, it would be less surprising to users to put the epoch in the filenames than to just let epochs work their magic seemingly at random.
Changing the default for anything in rpm just ain't gonna happen. The output file name is configurable, fell free to add Epoch: if that makes you happy.
> Changing the default for anything in rpm just ain't gonna happen. Then please consider this to be an RFE for changing the format for file names of packages included in the Fedora distribution. I am changing the "Component" field accordingly.
I'm not sure how you work against 7+ years of legacy package naming here.
I understand that this (and bug 118228 RFE) is going to be a tough change, but IMHO it is worth it. My proposal would be do make it at the beginning of the FC3 cycle and for things that break try fixing them so that both the new and the legacy names are supported.
This is not something we're going to change; too much of a legacy issue to deal with.