[Yum] more thoughts on yum.conf and packages/repositories

[Jeff Kowing]

seth vidal writes:
 > what about something like this for the yum.conf file

Excellent!

I would like to add my "yadda yadda yadda" also to the yum is great
crowd!  Thank you for an excellent package!  And I really appreciate
yum's careful balancing between features and configuration/option
nightmare - otherwise I would just use apt-get ;).

I'm new to yum but I like Seth's suggested enhancement to the yum.conf
file for scoring the repositories.  Personally, I think scoring should
be explicitly stated in the yum.conf file and should not be
complicated by auto-magic scoring based upon characteristics of the
repository.  

I guess explicit scoring also allows you to indicate repositories of
equal value which you cannot do using the current alphabetical system
(i.e., pkgpolicy=last).

I also really like the suggestion, as Seth suggested, of a second
configuration file that would be on a per package basis, maybe
something like:

# File: /etc/yum/package.conf
# Note: The default package selection policy is specified by the
# pkgpolicy attribute given in the [main] section of /etc/yum.conf

[glibc]
# Select the latest version of glibc only from rh9-os and the
# rh9-updates repositories.
includeonly=rh9-os,rh9-updates

[foobar]
# Select foobar from the highest scoring repository, irregardless of
# whether a more recent version exists in another repository.
pkgpolicy=last

[foo]
# Select the most recent release for version 1.2.3 ONLY.  
pin=1.2.3

# end of file

This brings me, finally, to two newbie questions about how packages
are currently selected during the following "tie" situations:

1) Given pkgpolicy=newest, if two repos contain the same most recent
   version, which repo is selected?  Is the tie broken by using the
   repo appearing last in the alphabetical serverid order?

2) Given pkgpolicy=last, if the selected repository has two versions
   of the package, I assume the newest version of that package is
   selected?

Once again, thanks to all the yum developers for a great job!

-- 
Jeff Kowing <jeffrey.d.kowing at nasa.gov>
All opinions expressed are my own and not of my employer.