[CentOS] Why is yum not liked by some?

[Les Mikesell]

On Tue, 2005-09-13 at 16:25, Mike McCarty wrote:
> > 
> > Les wanted similar to CVS functionality where you can tag a repository as 
> > consistent at a certain branch (not necessarily by date, as you mentioned), 
> > and be able to consistently grab a set of packages. 
> 
> Yes, that is what Les seems to want to happen, though he argues that he
> does not.

I want that functionality, but I was arguing that all it would take to
get it is sequentially increasing timestamps on files being added to
the repository and knowledge of the final timestamp of each consistent
update set - and letting the yum client have that information to figure
out the rest.

> > I mentioned CVS worked on a diff principle, and that that might be an 
> > interesting way of doing it (all the while thinking about my PostgreSQL 
> > users). Maybe I confused the two issues; possible.
> > 
> > The dumb client glorified webserver type system will be very difficult to make 
> > work this we, this is true.  But who says we have to stick to a glorified 
> > wget?

One thing that no one mentioned about CVS is that it always stores the
full ready-to-go copy of the latest version and builds the diffs
backwards to earlier versions on the assumption that you are most likely
to want the most recent version.  In a yum-ish adaptation of this
you would want the diffs between each version to be available for
the likely possibility that the client has the previous version
and wants to go to the latest.  

> I have pointed out that, in my experience, the degree of cooperation 
> needed to create a consistent unified release package is difficult to 
> achieve in a single corporation, let alone given the way Linux is handled.

No one in this entire thread has had any complaints about the
Centos repository management at the points when updates are completed.
The only issues are when mirrors are only partly in sync and my
wish for the ability to repeat an update regardless of subsequent
additions to the repository.  

Updating via binary diffs might be a good idea too, but it would
need to be very different from CVS because the goal would be to
minimize the traffic and make the client side do all the work.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com