[Yum] [followup] avoid installing 2 copies of everything multilib

[Robert G. Brown]

seth vidal writes:

> but I already have a goatee, So adding a mustache doesn't do much. :)

I was planning to chop the picture into little bits with a plastic
Groucho mustache I happen to have handy.

More seriously, as I've said before, I think that the yum interface is
already very nearly everything it needs to be.  People who can manage
regexps can clearly manage to write a wrapper script or a python
plug-in.

However, yum has also long since moved into the realm where its
usability has split into:

  "anybody" can use yum to list and get info on what's available and get
it to install selections from the list; This absolutely needs to remain
simple and unbroken.

and

  "serious professionals" who use yum in various automagical contexts to
do complex management tasks.  Complexity inside vs complexity outside,
you can't avoid the complexity itself.  While some things are obviously
crack or obviously brilliant extensions, there's a murky zone in
between.

As long as you don't break the first, and try not to break or change too
much what already works in the second, adding complexity is justified IF
it really adds a bit of power or enables an "easy" solution for
something that is really important and common but still difficult with
yum.

So I really wasn't kidding about regular expression pattern matching
rules being a better solution than trying to parse out globs any more
complex than the ones it already manages, the specific problem in this
discussion.  It is the Unix Way, one with very precise and well
documented rules that already exist and are known to work for this exact
problem space and that are in use in a dozen or more tools in common
usage in the sysadmin world.

It can always be made a flag-enabled option so that it breaks nothing
(globs still work same as always without the flag).  A lot of unix
sysadmins are, actually, pretty familiar with regexps from e.g. grep,
sed, perl, probably python, and all you need are "simple" pattern
matching ones to give people the ability to very precisely select
pattern-matched strings in package names.

However it is perfectly reasonable to view this as crack or to suggest
that it is a place for a possible plug-in as an experiment but not for
direct addition to the primary application or to just say "Gee that
might be nice but it is tricky to implement and I don't have time".  Or
to laugh hysterically and make fun of me.  Sniff.

I personally have never really NEEDED much beyond simple globs and if I
did I would write a PERL wrapper for yum with all sorts of regular
expression parsing in it, so I refuse to be wounded at your mockery of
my really quite clever ideas;-)

    rgb

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