[Yum-devel] beyond 3.0.X

[Michael Stenner]

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".

Again, just brainstorming.  Be nice.

					-Michael
-- 
  Michael D. Stenner                            mstenner at ece.arizona.edu
  ECE Department and Optical Sciences Center                520-626-1619
  University of Arizona                                         ECE 524G