[Yum] Problem with corrupt comps.xml file

[seth vidal]

On Mon, 2007-01-29 at 05:55 -0800, Bobby Jack wrote:
> All,
> 
> 1. Whenever I run pup or pirut, comps.xml appears to
> be overwritten. Why is this? If the file is some kind
> of cache, why is it constantly being written? Why
> doesn't this (appear to) happen when I run yum from
> the command-line?

it's not cached. it's downloading it on the cli, too.
it should be changed so it is cached, too.

> 2. Why is the comps.xml file not validated on first
> read? If it were, the nasty error below could be
> replaced with something like "/var/cache/yum/extras
> comps.xml file corrupt - does not validate against
> comps.dtd". Of course, this isn't perfect, but it's
> better than the current behaviour.

it is validated but this was a bug. yum was parsing the file, it
encountered the problem and it threw and exception, this was all valid
behavior. The problem was twofold:
 1. it really didn't need to throw the exception it could happily ignore
the issue and move on.
 2. nothing was catching the exception :)

Now, to be fair - this has been fixed in cvs and will be available in
3.0.X and 3.1.X releases before too long.

> 3. Why isn't comps.xml validated on write, most
> importantly? I would have thought one of the greatest
> benefits of an XML file format for pure data is that
> data files can easily be validated. It would be nice
> to have a mechanism to guarantee that such data files
> cannot become corrupt - i.e. DTD validation.

that's something to take up with fedora extras, really. It could be
validated, it's just not and someone made a typo.


-sv