[Yum-devel] beyond 3.0.X

seth vidal skvidal at linux.duke.edu
Thu Dec 7 15:25:55 UTC 2006


On Fri, 2006-12-01 at 09:21 -0700, Michael Stenner wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 01, 2006 at 10:56:00AM -0500, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> >  - trying to get the infrastructure for handling CDs pushed down into
> > yum
> 
> Some of that may go into urlgrabber, and I'm game.
> 
> I know this sort of thing has been mentioned before and shot down, but
> I'd actually be interested in thinking about client-side repo
> management.  Consider this high-level brainstorming.  I have not
> thought this through heavily, so be nice... it would be nice if it
> were easier to 
> 
>   1) find repos
>   2) add/remove repos
>   3) control which ones are used at any given time
>   4) deal with "repo dependencies" - freshrpms requires extras, for
>      example
> 
> I realize that except for point 3, all of these can (and possibly
> should) be done outside yum.  Even 3 might oughta be done in a
> plugin.  That's fine.  It would also require additional (maybe
> centralized) metadata.
> 
> I recently installed FC6 after using CentOS 4 everywhere for a while
> and I found it frustrating trying find things... some repos appeared,
> others disappeared, some merged... everything changed.  Some repos
> have web-based instructions with .repo snippets.  Others have you
> install and rpm that includes the repo files and keys, but you STILL
> wanna edit the .repo files because maybe you don't want them turned on
> by default.  If found it a real hassle, and there were a "repo
> manager" tool that let you browse repos like you browse packages (I've
> been avoiding the brain-churning analogy between yum(rpms) and
> repo-tool(repos) but if you wanna think about it that way) that would
> be cool.
> 
> OK... here's an initial thought spurred by the brain-churning
> analogy... can you tell I'm making this up as I go along?  Sorry.
> Anyway, at the risk of creating more confusion by mixing the two
> conceptually separate layers.  There could be an encouragement to have
> repo managers distribute repo-rpms like some do.  Then, there could be
> a "repo repo" which hold all of those rpms.  That way, the repo rpms
> could take care of the deps for you.  When you try to install
> "michael's favorite toys" repo, it tells you you need "livna".
> 

the problem we have is this:
 - if we could include livna in the distro we would but we're not
allowed to link or refer to it officially due to contributory
infringement rules. So the above really wouldn't help anyone.

I'd be happy to include it and just be done, if we could - but adding a
level of indirection above doesn't necessarily buy us anything at all.
If there are free/distributable software that are in other repos then it
won't impact us.

Now, I'd be perfectly fine with a slightly easier mechanism for adding
new repos. The repo-in-an-rpm way of doing it works quite well with yum
[local]install reponame and/or the graphical installers. And that might
be the best way to deal with the problem, simply to tell 3rd party repo
maintainers to standardize on that deployment mechanism.

What do you think?
-sv





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