I downloaded the new rawhide updates (wrote a program to do this a while back), and instead of installing them manually (like i do on my main machine) I have been experimenting with using rpm's -F to do this (and just leaving the old files there until I had a chance to go clean them out). Worked great for the first few upgrades, but then I started having problems with it under the following set of circumstances: A) I have a package installed that I have inside a folder. B) I have an old version of the package in the folder. C) I have a new version of the package in the folder. What happens is it successfully ignores the one that is already installed, but doesn't ignore the old file. So when it goes and performs a conflict analysis it determines that it is conflicting with the new one. I can ALMOST understand this behavior with standard installs, but not with a -F or a -U, since neither of those will install the old version anyway, so why perform the conflict analysis with them. [root@olympus RPMs]# rpm -Fhv * package rawhide-release-1.4.2-1 (which is newer then rawhide-release-1.4.1-1) is already installed package tar-1.12-10.64014 (which is newer then tar-1.12- 10.64013) is already installed file /etc/redhat-release conflicts between attemped installs of rawhide-release-19990708-1 and rawhide-release- 1.4.1-1 (it happened with tar as well before I removed the old copy, so it isn't just a problem with the new version format of the redhat-release package)
The important part of this problem is the 1st message, the conflicts are incidental, and are side effects from the fact that MD5 sums have actually changed between new and old packages. Changing the subject line.
This bug is old enough that the original problem is now the defacto behavior or rpm IMHO. Yes it's still the same behavior.