[Yum] pkg groups

[seth vidal]

Hi all,
 Running into a conceptual snag with pkg groups I wanted to probe the
list about.

so I first thought that using the red hat comps format would be
common/familiar and expandable enough for most people.

Then I looked in more detail at the problem of conditional pkgs.

ie:

0 group name here {
  pkg1
  pkg2
  pkg3
  pkg4
  ? conditionalgroup {
    pkga
    pkgb
    pkgc
  }
  pkg5
  pkg6
  pkg7
}


in this example - if the group conditionalgroup is tagged to be
installed then also install pkga, pkgb and pkgc

That works great in anaconda b/c it knows which groups are tagged as
installed.

Doesn't work so well when there is no group-state being maintained.

So the options are:
1. maintain state on group selections 
 - this breaks badly when first starting up - how will it know which
groups you selected in anaconda?
 - this breaks b/c groups have no hold over what gets erased and
therefore you could intentionally remove a pkg you don't want but have
it get added back in b/c of a group dependency.

2. don't maintain state and use the groups solely as pkg lists, ignore
conditionals entirely.
 - thats just irritating to the user who knows that yum reads the comps
file but only _mostly.

3. don't use the comps format at all, do something else, far simpler as
install/update groups.
 like:
  group name
      pkgname
      pkgname
      pkgname

 group name
     pkgname
     pkgname

and just have them be sucked in by python in some way.



part 2 of the problem:
how to deal with groups on multiple repositories.
if I'm trying to install group "foo" and both server1 and server2 have a
group foo which do I choose.

there would be no way to determine who had the newest foo so we could
just use "last in wins" as the rule. That could cause some issues - but
you should know what groups etc your repositories are providing, right?
:)

I'm open to suggestions at this point.

My first thought is to just do simple groups and last-in - its quick,
its functional and it will probably satisfy 80% of what I need and most
people need but I'd love to hear ideas.
thanks

-sv


-- 
GPG Public Key: http://www.phy.duke.edu/~skvidal/skvidal.gpg
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