[CentOS-devel] C5: yum-metadata and non-yum yum-metadata

[Matt Hyclak]

On Thu, Mar 08, 2007 at 07:24:55PM +0000, Karanbir Singh enlightened us:
> firstly, we slipped on shipping beta out yesterday, but we hit a couple 
> of issues that needed to be resolved before we could get the iso's out. 
> Most of the things are now fixed and the final bits are building as I 
> write this email.
> 
> there is one issue that was raised by Johnny that really does need 
> fixing, perhaps not something for beta-public, but something that does 
> need to get fixed for Final release.
> 
> <background>
> The way things stand right now, anaconda uses yum in c5, so the media 
> now contains a local repository metadata but its not the standard meta 
> data used by yum. Anaconda and pirut need a specific string added in ( 
> the mediaid fluffage, some of the fedora guys will be familiar with ) so 
> that they can use the media at installtime and also be able to use the 
> same media post install to add packages.
> 
> The issue is, that this now creates a problem in that you can no longer 
> loop mount the DVD iso under a http/ftp server and just use that as a 
> remote repository to pull packages from using yum.
> </background>
> 
> So now the thing is - for us to facilitate this there are three options.
> 
> 1. We ship 2 repodata/'s on the media and use one for anaconda and use 
> the other for yum ( ugly fix )
> 
> 2. We change anaconda to not need that media stuff in the repodata/, and 
> get that from somewhere else ( not gonna happen : too much work, and too 
> much potential to change from upstream in ways not even imaginable )
> 
> 3. We fix yum to use the media fluff'd repodata/ ( potentially a few 
> lines fix and should just work ). This will allow yum + anaconda, pirut 
> and friends to essentially just use the same repository metadata.
> 
> What does everyone else think about this ? I think from this email, my 
> own personal preference is easy to make out.
> 
> Also, is this really an issue we even need to worry about ? For me, its 
> an issue since I use loop mounted media right off the block. Does anyone 
> else do the same, or is everyone just coping the tree's out and doing 
> createrepo foo ?

It will probably bite anyone using yam/mrepo, since it does iso loopback
mounting. 

I'm voting for #3, especially if it's something that could be accepted
upstream that won't break anything else.

Matt

-- 
Matt Hyclak
Department of Mathematics 
Department of Social Work
Ohio University
(740) 593-1263