[CentOS-devel] RPMS and REPOS and REPO-Linkages

On Friday 17 November 2006 03:13, Lance Davis wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Nov 2006, Jim Perrin wrote:
> >> I agree with Johnny here. It's very convenient to be able to pull in a
> >> newer version of a single package and have it work on top of an existing
> >> stable system. No need to debug MySQL 5 because I wanted PHP 5.
>
> I can see the need for possibly 2 different repositroies here to provide
> diferent strokes for different folks :-
>
> maybe
>
> centosplus-base linked against base - usable for people who only want to
> include particular packages and want them linked against base + updates.
>
> centosplus - where packages are linked against other packages in
> centosplus - usable by people who want all the latest & greatest.
>
> (or centosplus and centosplus-ng - that is up for discussion )
>
> Once we have the new builder in place it shouldnt be too much effort to
> provide both.
>
> The same discussion presumably is also merited for what centos-extras are
> linked against ???

If the following is a rehash of a topic that's already been talked to death, 
please just point me at the spot in the archive...

I've always been a little confused by the packaging choices in the centosplus 
repos.  Why name packages such as php and mysql the same as their core 
counterparts?  Why not append an extra 5 to both to the package names to 
designate they are fundamentally different?  This seems to be how Mandiva and 
Debian do it, and it seems to work.

For example having php 5 named php5-5.0.4 instead of php-5.0.4 would get 
around accidental upgrades after adding the repo, wouldn't it?  Similarly 
with mysql 5.

As for which lib to built with, you could standardize on the default being the 
core package, and if needed, another built specifically using the centosplus 
package but also named differently.  In the example this thread was started 
with and using the naming convention I just put forward, you would have 
packages such as this in the centosplus repo:

mysql5-5.0.22-1.centos.1.i386.rpm
php5-5.0.4-5.centos4.i386.rpm
php5-mysql-5.0.4-5.centos4.i386.rpm (built against mysql 4 in the core)
php5-mysql5-5.0.4-5.centos4.i386.rpm (obviously built against mysql5 in 
centosplus)

There are no accidental upgrades from adding the whole centosplus repo, it's 
immediately clear what's being installed, and using the Provides and 
Obsoletes correctly in the spec files should be able to remove any conflicts 
offered by having separate sets of packages with competing functionality.

This seems to be the route other distros have taken, with what seems to be 
success.  Is there a reason CentOS didn't follow this?  Is there some 
fundamental drawback I'm missing in this?

-- 
- Kevan Benson
- A-1 Networks