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

Thu Mar 8 19:24:55 UTC 2007
Karanbir Singh <mail-lists at karan.org>

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 ?

-- 
Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/ : 2522219 at icq