mjhjmtu

For reasons that I cannot control, I am being forced to roll my own rpms for PHP under CentOS 7.4. I have built rpms for php 7.2.5 and installed them in a local repository. yum install php picks up the local version and the package is installed under /usr/local. My problem is with php-pear. For some reason, yum wants to pick up the stock version of php-pear instead of my version, even though my version has the higher version number.

# yum --showduplicates list php-pear
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
Available Packages
php-pear.noarch 1.10.5-1.el7.centos nci-f
php-pear.noarch 1:1.9.4-21.el7 base
php-pear.noarch 1:1.9.4-21.el7 base
php-pear.noarch 1:1.9.4-21.el7 base
# yum install php-pear
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package php-pear.noarch 1:1.9.4-21.el7 will be installed
--> Processing Dependency: php-bz2 for package: 1:php-pear-1.9.4-21.el7.noarch
--> Processing Dependency: php-tokenizer for package: 1:php-pear-1.9.4-21.el7.noarch
--> Processing Dependency: php-xml for package: 1:php-pear-1.9.4-21.el7.noarch
--> Processing Dependency: php-cli for package: 1:php-pear-1.9.4-21.el7.noarch
--> Processing Dependency: php-zlib for package: 1:php-pear-1.9.4-21.el7.noarch
--> Processing Dependency: php-posix for package: 1:php-pear-1.9.4-21.el7.noarch
--> Processing Dependency: php-ftp for package: 1:php-pear-1.9.4-21.el7.noarch
--> Processing Dependency: php-pcre for package: 1:php-pear-1.9.4-21.el7.noarch
--> Running transaction check
 ...

I have set the priority of the nci-f repository to 1 with no effect. I know that I can use yum install php-pear-7.2.5-1.el7.centos to install the specific package but both want to use the simpler command (on 400+ servers) and want to make sure updates work in the future.

Also, in my .spec file for the php-pear package I do have the line

Obsoletes: php-pear <= 1:1.9.4

Why is yum picking the lower version package and how can I get it to prefer my package instead?

See the epoch (the 1 in 1:1.9.4-21), it overrides your (default) epoch 0 packages.

The epoch was introduced in rpm packages precisely to be able to "fix" version numbers that go backwards. Use with extreme caution.

Besides, the RHEL/Centos packages probably include lots of local fixes/tweaks. I'd suggest you start with the official source packages and tweak those, replacing the sources with newer versions as needed.