Hullo All,
I do quite a bit of testing of a FOSS package, which I install from rpm.
At any one time there may be 3 versions ( current release, new release candidate, and snapshot of trunk) that I wish to test.
If I stick to normal naming conventions (i.e. current release fred-2010.0...rpm, release candidate fred-2010.2...rpm, and trunk fred-2010.3...rpm) it seems to me that I can only have one version installed at any one time.
Is there a 'proper' way of managing this (using the package manager), so that I can have multiple versions installed at any one time?

Cheers,
Terry

Not as far as I know ... rpm is designed to update packages with the same name. I've been able to work around it in the past by creating packages where the real version number becomes part of the name and a fake version is added. This allows you to install multiple versions without the latest one removing the previous installs

eg.

<jdk_1.6.0>-<1.0>.x86_64.rpm

cheers

1 members found this post helpful.

Have a look at --installroot option in yum's man page.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for that advice, I have yet to try it but it looks promising.

Cheers,
Terry

.. interesting idea, how would that work in practice, doesn't it work with the same package database ? .. or would you need to set up multiple chroot environments ?

I tried (a few times) to do a localinstall using --installroot, but haven't had any luck. I get the following...

"[terry@phenom x86_64]$ sudo yum localinstall --nogpgcheck --installroot=/usr/local/hugin hugin-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64.rpm hugin-base-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64.rpm
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Local Package Process
Examining hugin-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64.rpm: hugin-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64
Marking hugin-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64.rpm to be installed
fedora/metalink | 17 kB 00:00
Could not parse metalink https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=fedora-$releasever&arch=x86_64 error was
No repomd file
Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: fedora. Please verify its path and try again"

At this stage I'm not sure what to make of it.

Cheers,
Terry

I haven't tested but could you please try again with --disablerepo='*' option.

Looks like it is expecting a complete new environment.
Here's what I get...

[terry@phenom x86_64]$ sudo yum localinstall --nogpgcheck --installroot=/usr/local/hugin --disablerepo='*' hugin-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64.rpm hugin-base-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64.rpm
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Local Package Process
Examining hugin-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64.rpm: hugin-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64
Marking hugin-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64.rpm to be installed
Examining hugin-base-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64.rpm: hugin-base-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64
Marking hugin-base-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64.rpm to be installed
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package hugin.x86_64 0:2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13 set to be installed
--> Processing Dependency: /bin/sh for package: hugin-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64
.
.
[snip many dependency checks]

--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Error: Package: hugin-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64 (/hugin-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64)
Requires: libm.so.6(GLIBC_2.2.5)(64bit)
.
.
[snip many Requires:...]


Error: Package: hugin-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64 (/hugin-2010.2.0-0.3.20100929hg.fc13.x86_64)
Requires: libGLU.so.1()(64bit)
You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
You could try running: rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest
[terry@phenom x86_64]$

It is beginning to look like --installroot isn't really the answer to my original question. Thanks for trying to help.

The question remains.

Cheers,
Terry

As kbp mentioned, I think you need to setup a chroot environment. Another way, for the testing purpose, I suggest you install one version from binary and compile another version(s) from source.

The only time I've ever used --installroot was when booted into rescue mode to repair a broken install, as far as I can tell that's the arguments only purpose .. ?

for multiple versions ( my case Celesta "official-1.6",svn-gnome","svn-qt4" )
and Gimp stable, daily( the whole build tree) i do source builds

on fedora it was too much of a pain to turn them into a rpm and "install" the rpm

for one easy but for 3 different versions ....