= phenomenon =
Packages that take advantage of Provides tag and two packages provides the same name without the version specified, they are treated equally. No one has greater preference than the other and so the dependency solver like the one in DNF or PackageKit can practically choose any of them during the resolution even though from user, packager or distribution point of view, one package is obviously superior [1].

= reason =
Missing mechanism how to prefer packages on distribution level.

= recommendation =
We have designed solution for preferring packages within distribution [2] when using DNF, PackageKit and Gnome Software. The first two sections of the page (user and package maintainer preference) are obvious and already approved. The third section covers Provides selection mechanism on distribution level.

There are 3 issues that needs to be decided:

1) '''whether the definition of rules could be in fedora-repos package'''

Hints (rules) with prioritized packages for depsolver needs to be saved in the package that is installed by default on every Fedora instance. We have identified fedora-repos package to be a good candidate for storing these metadata so we don't need to introduce the new metapackage.

2) '''approve the first bunch of preferred packages''' (mariadb and sendmail). That means getting these lines into fedora-repos subpackage:
{{{

definition of Fedora preferred packages

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/ProvidesPreferences#Distribution_preference

Suggests: mariadb
Suggests: sendmail
}}}

3) '''define how would the future process of getting new preferred packages into fedora-repos look like'''. Note: we have got feedback from stack holders, that any complicated process that would go through FESCo, would discourage packagers from using this mechanism.

[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1192182

[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/ProvidesPreferences#Distribution_preference