[Rpm-metadata] metadata layout problems and some history

[Matt Barringer]

On Mon, 9 Aug 2010, seth vidal wrote:

> On Mon, 2010-08-09 at 13:27 +0200, Matt Barringer wrote:
>> I would love to see these three features.  But isn't repo labeling already
>> covered by the <repo> tag?  Something simple like <base_system>repo
>> tag</basesystem> would be nice for giving an idea of whether or not a
>> repository can work with a certain platform.
>
> you can munge repo labeling with tags, yes - but it's very freeform.
>
> We have architectures in there so you can glance at that list and see
> whether or not you even need to go on. If it's an all-ppc repo and
> you're on i686 it's kinda pointless. :)

Sorry, by "platform" I meant the base distribution the packages were built 
for, not the architecture.  In SUSE Studio, we have users that try to 
mix-and-match packages from creative repository combinations like Fedora, 
Packman, and multiple versions of openSUSE, which doesn't really work out 
in the dependency resolution stage.  We try to guess at what the base 
distro is based on the URL, but it's an inexact method, so having a more 
explicit dependency tag in the metadata would be great.

--
Matt Barringer, Software Engineer
SUSE Linux Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg)
http://susestudio.com                 http://www.novell.com/linux