Chris,

> under various *nix incarnations. You mention looking at the "provides" info
> for the packages owning libm ... what program do you use to view this?

Run rpm in query mode with the --provides option and the name of a package
as argument.  For example:

	grimmy:~$ rpm -q --provides glibc | grep libm
	libm.so.6  
	libm.so.6(GLIBC_2.0)  
	libm.so.6(GLIBC_2.1)  
	libm.so.6(GLIBC_2.2)  
	grimmy:~$ 

> I'm very interested in fixing it since RPMs have the potential to make
> life so much simpler for us in the long run.  The third solution you
> mentioned seems like the ideal one ("somebody figures the magic
> "Requires:" line to specify semi-automatic dependencies").

I now have a few ideas about how this might be fixed.  I'll try them for
the next build.  (In the meantime, `--nodeps' is your friend. ;)

Regards,
Ian