[Yum-devel] offline yum mode?

[Michael E Brown]

I was thinking about a couple enhancements to mock, and one of the
things that came up was an 'offline' mode for mock, ie. the ability to
build packages when disconnected from the internet.

I believe that everything is now in place in mock 0.8.x to allow this.
Mock now caches /var/cache/yum. As long as you already have downloaded
the correct BuildRequires for your package, there is no compelling
reason to hit the network if the user wants to do an offline build.

This would require an enhancement to yum. I was thinking it could
possibly be a plugin, but I wanted to get feedback on how to implement
it. Basically, the idea is to just assume that the contents of
/var/cache/yum are up-to-date and use them. If there is anything missing
that needs to be downloaded from the internet, then it should basically
error out. I was thinking an "--offline" cmdline parameter.

Any pointers, hints, or other ideas would be most welcome.

Thanks,
Michael Brown