CentOS - Jul 2012 - Curiosity Question

Hi All,

During updates I see a number preceding the package to be updated as 
indicated in the below example:

  1:perl-Module-Build-0.3500-119.el6_1.1.x86_64
  ^
Does anyone know what does this indicates?

Thank you,

Phil
-- 
Carpe Aptenodytes! (Seize the Penguins!)

Hello Phil,

On Fri, 2012-07-13 at 05:52 -0400, Phil Savoie wrote:
>   1:perl-Module-Build-0.3500-119.el6_1.1.x86_64
>   ^
> Does anyone know what does this indicates?
It's the epoch, which is essentially a version override, i.e. any
version of a package with an epoch of 1 is more recent than a version
without an epoch (epoch = 0). It was conceived to overcome issues caused
by poor versioning.

For example
package-1beta-1
vs.
1:package-1-2

(1beta > 1, epoch to the rescue)

Regards,
Leonard.

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