Description of problem:

I am unable to update some of my packages from jpackage that depend on
xml-commons-api due to a very strange reason. Here's what happens:

[root@breaker devel]# rpm -q xml-commons{,-apis} 
xml-commons-1.3.02-0.b2.7jpp.10
xml-commons-apis-1.3.02-0.b2.7jpp.10
[root@breaker devel]# yum update
...
--> Processing Dependency: xml-commons = 1.3.02-0.b2.7jpp.10 for package:
xml-commons-apis
...
Error: Missing Dependency: xml-commons = 1.3.02-0.b2.7jpp.10 is needed by
package xml-commons-apis

As you can see, when attempting to update, yum says that it can't find a
dependency that actually exists and is installed.

When I try to install the dependent package itself, it yields no problems:

[root@breaker devel]# rpm -e --nodeps xml-commons-apis
[root@breaker devel]# yum -y install xml-commons-apis-1.3.02-0.b2.7jpp.10.i386.rpm
...
Installed: xml-commons-apis.i386 0:1.3.02-0.b2.7jpp.10
Complete!
[root@breaker devel]# 

Additional info:

I am not sure whether this is a rpm problem or a yum problem. Please
reassign when appropriate.

This morning my roommate had a quite similar problem while trying to install
his homebrewed mencoder subpackage that didn't see an installed mplayer
subpackage coming from the very same package. What it had in common with
this was a horribly long version string. But this might be a wrong guess.

Also, I am not the only one with this problem. See this URL:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=161024