Now that java-1.6.0-openjdk is in rhel5 (since 5.3 it seems), shouldn't be removed from epel-5 repos? There's another issue that epel's newest version, java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0-1.0.b12.el5.2 trumps rhel5's, java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0-0.30.b09.el5 (latest in updates that I can find atm).
Thanks for your report. Please go complain at your operating system vendor. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 498967 ***
OK, I care less about the upgrade path versioning issues. Fact remains, the existence of it in the epel repos continues to override a core rhel package... a policy violation. It was pointed out to me on irc that rhel's packaging doesn't include the browser plugin portion, so that part could well remain without conflict.
For reference, the policy I refer to is: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/GuidelinesAndPolicies#Policy "EPEL packages should only enhance and never disturb the Enterprise Linux distributions they were build for. Thus packages from EPEL should never replace packages from the target base distribution..." So, unless I'm missing something, the path forward here is fairly simple and clear.
Per maintainers preference, marking upgrade path issue as a blocker, pending policy clarifications.
But do keep the browser plugin (which probably means that this has to be rebuilt from the RHEL version of openJDK).
I guess this has been taken care of... closing.