[CentOS-devel] Creating a CentOS-only package

Wed May 21 15:16:53 UTC 2014
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 6:10 PM, Karanbir Singh <mail-lists at karan.org> wrote:
>
> Packaging is hard, sure - and it gets dramatically harder when executing
> without a policy framework. The includepkg / exclude process is also not
> easy, neither is the costs nor priorities, they all come with their own
> wins and pains.
>
> Also worth noting is that SIG's dont map to repos - many ( most so far )
> are likely going to opt to deliver into a common set of repos, making it
> easier for others to consume components, specially the infra level SIGs
> like Virt / Storage etc. So we need to address this issue either way,
> sooner the better

I've always thought that package lists should be the thing with
ultimate control.  That is, a package list should be able to specify
both the repo and version for every package that should be installed.
That would mean a SIG just has to publish a list of packages and add
anything unique to _some_ repo.   Anyone consuming such a list would
be assured that they were only using packages that had previously been
installed and tested together.   You'd need some changes to yum to
respect the repo specification (which would avoid a lot of breakage in
its own right), a tool to export the list from a working, tested
instance (so you aren't just making them up from guesswork), and
report differences between the current install and a list, and
probably a tool to spin an iso with packages included for offline
installs.  Oh, and some syntax in the list to indicate repo changes
and replaced and  dropped packages.

As side effects, repos need minimal coordination, and installs/updates
become repeatable.  And the stuff you pass around is just
human-understandable text, not special-purpose code that only works
with one version of one tool in one distribution and needing specially
build repositories with subsets of packages.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com