Unexpected behavior when using -q --queryformat in %pre scriplet

[idzikovsky]

I need to backup some conf files of my package during upgrade into directory called e.g /mypackage-<old-version>.
So I'm trying to get old package version in %pre scriplet and doing it in the following way:

%pre
VERS=$(rpm --queryformat='%{VERSION}' -q mypackage)
VERS_ALTERNATIVE=$(rpm -qi mypackage | awk -F': ' '/Version/ {print $2}')

And the strange thing is that VERS variable got version of the package that I'm upgrading to (newer), while value of VERS_ALTERNATIVE contains version of the package that I'm upgrading from (older).

I'm do realize that invoking rpm -q in RPM scirplets is not the best idea, but anyway for me seems like this behavior is some kind of bug, as I suppose that in all cases result of rpm -qi and rpm --queryformat should output similar information.

I got this in CentOS 8 with RPM version 4.14.2. Same problem in CentOS 7.

[ffesti]

%{VERSION} is replaced within the spec file itself. You need to use %%{VERSION} to avoid expanding the macro right away.
As you already said this is probably a really bad idea anyway. RPM actually does backup modified config files on it's own if they are tagged as config files in the package. Do things like this in a %pre script should not be necessary for all but very exotic cases.

[idzikovsky]

Thank you, and sorry for wrong bug report.