[Yum] Feature suggestion (was groups)

[Robert G. Brown]

On 25 Oct 2003, Sean O'Connell wrote:

> On Sat, 2003-10-25 at 08:52, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> >   sorry if i missed any previous discussion regarding groups, but
> > "man yum" has no explanation of "yum grouplist|groupinstall|groupupdate".
> > 
> >   pointers?
> > 
> 
> The file yumgroups.xml defines the groups (based on anaconda's
> definition of groups, like @ Base in a kickstart file, which is a hidden
> group, see below) available in a given repository (see
> /var/cache/yum/<repos-name>/yumgroups.xml). You can then do
> 
> yum grouplist
> 
> and you will see the available and installed visible groups.
> 
> yum grouplist hidden
> 
> will show the available and installed hidden + visible groups. To list 
> subgroups/rpms that make a given group (say Base):
> 
> 
> yum grouplist hidden Base

This is very helpful.  

Problem statement:

  Create a minimal list of installed packages for use EITHER in a
kickstart file that would recreate a given system OR in a
post-kickstart-or-other yum-based install.

Analysis:

  yum grouplist

does fine at creating the group list.

  yum list

does fine at creating the package list.  However, what can be used to
take yum grouplist, expand all the packages in the groups (only), REMOVE
those packages from the results of yum list, and output a list of
installed package groups and the "leftover" packages that are not part
of any installed group?  Aside from a wrapping perl script, of course,
that collects the list and does the associated logic.

Conclusion:

I think that being able to do this should be a clear design goal, since
it supports the creation of a variety of installation methodologies,
kickstart in particular but also the yum-based install.  If the
resulting list was presented in something like "dependency order" (so
earlier entries were the things that had to be installed to support
later entries, to the extent possible, with e.g. Base first and so on)
so much the better.

I personally am in the process of developing the "perfect kickstart
file" for my home computers -- one that has just enough stuff so that I
never lack for anything that I use (however infrequently) but that
doesn't have stuff I or my family don't need.  It is easy enough to get
a listing of all installed packages, but fairly difficult to get a
minimal listing as described above, and very tedious to extract the
contents of all the installed package groups and remove them from the
list of packages -- VERY tedious to produce something that is truly of
minimal size (which might "diff" a package list against installed files
and elect to install a package group with 80% overlap and remove the 20%
in a ks list with the -packagename.rpm syntax.

Consider this a suggestion for a future feature (or a request for how to
accomplish this now without a wrapper script, if it is already a
feature).

    rgb

-- 
Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu