You and @zbyszek need to coordinate. He's got https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/fedora-release/pull-request/6 addressing a similar problem.

Yeah, sorry, I should have made a comment before. #6 should be merged first, because it is certainly needed independently of whether this change is done.

@zbyszek Please go a head your PR at first. Then I will think a way to adapt my PR if it is still needed.

After your PR is merged, I am happy if you let me know.

Thats merged, can you check and close this or rebase it with whats needed left ?

@kevin I rebased. I think this modification is still necessary to consider bootstrapping package.

Because the point is

The bootstrapping package (ex. rubygem-rspec-core-3.7.0-2.the_prefix.fc30~bootstrap.noarch.rpm) has to be recognized as earlier package version than non-bootstrapping package by RPM. Below result by rpmdev-sort shows the order.

$ cat rpm_packages.txt
rubygem-rspec-core-3.7.0-2.the_prefix.fc30.noarch.rpm
rubygem-rspec-core-3.7.0-2.the_prefix.fc30~bootstrap.noarch.rpm

$ cat rpm_packages.txt | rpmdev-sort
rubygem-rspec-core-3.7.0-2.the_prefix.fc30~bootstrap.noarch.rpm <= The bootstrapping package is recognized as earlier version.
rubygem-rspec-core-3.7.0-2.the_prefix.fc30.noarch.rpm

It is also beneficial for people that the suffix string "~bootstrap" is hidden or capsulized in the common logic (fedora-release). It have to be "~bootstrap", not "-bootstrap".

I also show the result of my test on my mock environment on rawhide.

<mock-chroot> sh-4.4# cat /usr/lib/rpm/macros.d/macros.dist | grep %dist
%dist                %{?distprefix}.fc30%{?with_bootstrap:~bootstrap}
<mock-chroot> sh-4.4# rpm -D 'with_bootstrap 1' -E '%dist'
.fc30~bootstrap
<mock-chroot> sh-4.4# rpm -E '%dist'
.fc30

Seems reasonable to me...

Thank you for the merging! \o/

I feel it would be better to move this into rpm itself
(eg try running fedpkg verrel).

It is not uncommon to want to override %dist for a different release,
but this hides any bootstrap embedded in dist.