Yes that is already way too much extra work. And when those versions are not yet available to depend on? libheif, libaom and libraw needs latest versions and be built together.
That is an implementation detail, not a problem with rpm spec. When comcast builds rpms, the entire chain of required software is built with it. I should add: it is trivial to make integration tests to catch exactly what you describe. If the software is not built internally then the infra team ensures the required repos exist and dependencies match up to official repo rpms.
None of that has to do with the difficulty of rpm spec, but entirely with organizational planning. You do plan while building software.. right?
Also github does the exact same thing but with deb. It works in the real world. Quite well, too!
