What do all the letters and numbers in the rpm name openssl-devel-0.9.8e-27.el5_10.1 mean? I recognize the openssl-devel-0.9.8e part because that's the same number applied by the developement team at openssl.org. But what do the numbers and letters in the 27.el5_10.1 part mean?
I've googled and searched on Red Hat's web site for an explanation. The best explanation I've found is https://access.redhat.com/site/security/updates/backporting/ but it doesn't really go into the version string scheme/format.
Context: We're developing software which compiles and links against openssl, so our code depends on openssl-devel. To make this convenient, we repackage some binaries from the openssl-devel installation (e.g. /usr/lib/libssl.a) as a maven artifact and upload the artifact to a private maven repo. Maven artifacts have version numbers, so I'm planning to version it identically to its RPM source. I'd like to simplify the version string a bit for example, if I know that all the 27.x versions of openssl-devel-0.9.8e-27.el5_10.1 will be compile and link compatible then I could get by with a simpler artifact version of 0.9.8e-27 rather than the full 0.9.8e-27.el5_10.1.
Best Answer
The Maximum RPM book has a page on naming conventions in the File Format section, which can be seen here:
http://ftp.rpm.org/max-rpm/ch-rpm-file-format.html#S1-RPM-FILE-FORMAT-FILE-NAMING-CONVENTION
There is also some information on the fedora site. I'm not sure if you have already seen this, but here is the link:
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora_Draft_Documentation/0.1/html/RPM_Guide/ch09s03.html