Petr "Qaxi" Klíma wrote:
Diversity adds a lot of value. If EPEL will be only repo nobody on RHEL workstation can see/listen MP3, WMA, DVD playing, because of interesting US software patent and millenium act law.
That's not what I meant. Obviously we need additional packages in other repositories and that will be true as long as there is any policy that might exclude any contribution to a centrally managed repository. The question is, why do we need/want different versions of the same-named packages, or packages that provide different versions of the same files that can overwrite each other based on conditions we can't control? There probably is a good reason to want this - I just can't think of it right now.
That's easy:
(this is example, has no reflection to current state ...)
EPEL provides xmms-1.2.10-1.i586.rpm - but without MP3, WMA, AAC ... DAG provides xmms-1.2.9-1.rf.i586.rpm - with all those beasts ATRPM provides xmms-1.2.10-1.at.i586.rpm - with all those beasts
Which you installs? Who knows, probably EPEL ...
Solution?
Repo priorities and includes
But wouldn't it be easier if the packages had different names so you could just install the one(s) you want from the command line?