[Rpm-metadata] xml update

[Jeff Johnson]

Panu Matilainen wrote:

>On Thu, 2003-10-16 at 19:30, Jeff Licquia wrote:
>  
>
>>On Wed, 2003-10-15 at 23:58, seth vidal wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Ok,
>>>  I tried just doing a mock up from what I mentioned last night.
>>>
>>>so a file might look something like this:
>>>http://linux.duke.edu/~skvidal/metadata/rpm-metadata3.xml
>>>      
>>>
>>I've updated my Debian-style mockup and generator script.  For
>>reference, everything is at:
>>
>>  http://hackers.progeny.com/~licquia/rpm-metadata/
>>
>>The new metadata file is at:
>>
>>  http://hackers.progeny.com/~licquia/rpm-metadata/metadata-3.xml
>>
>>    
>>
>
>Hmm. Can we please have Priority in non-deb specific place? Rpm itself
>doesn't support that but apt-rpm does. The priority support in apt-rpm
>is clumsy at best (/etc/apt/rpmpriorities file) currently but for the
>xml one could set it much more sanely per repository. Similarly apt-rpm
>*could* use Suggests and Enhances, it just currently doesn't since that
>info isn't available anywhere.
>

At the risk of upetting a fragile but developing consensus, I suggest 
that all of
     Obsoletes:
     Conflicts:
     Enhances:
     Suggests:
     Recommends:
     Priority:
be made common.

The risk is mainly with Obsoletes: and Conflicts: which may very well
have subtle and incompatible semantics. I'll wave my hands and mumble
     Implementation details.
for the moment, as I do not believe there are serious incompatibilities.

The other 4 have no (current) rpm usage semantic, but might very well
be useful for depsolvers. I'd suggest adopting the current Debian semantic
exactly as is, after carefully thinking about how that semantic might be
usefully implemented in rpm depsolvers. Clearly, apt-rpm already has
an implementation that makes use of that information.

OTOH, if my suggestion appears controversial, then please feel
free to ignore entirely. Consensus is the far more important goal
for a common metadata representation.

73 de Jeff