[CentOS-devel] Shipping an EPEL release

Sun Sep 16 18:05:32 UTC 2012
Ned Slider <ned at unixmail.co.uk>

On 16/09/12 17:19, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 1:01 PM, Ned Slider<ned at unixmail.co.uk>  wrote:
>> On 15/09/12 17:04, Les Mikesell wrote:
>>>
>>> I disagree.  I'd much rather see commonly needed 3rd party repos
>>> included but with enabled=0. settings.
>>
>>
>> But that's not your decision to make - it's a decision for the repo
>> themselves how they configure their repo in their config file.
>
> If it is included, it can be patched.   Debian/ubuntu do this somewhat
> sensibly but there you have to make a one-time selection to enable the
> extra repos.  I think it is nicer to keep the alternative ones (except
> maybe EPEL) disabled.
>

As a repo provider, if you patch it you can support it as it's no longer 
what I ship. I don't want the extra support load when you break what I ship.

Which is pretty much the same response you'll hear from CentOS every 
time someone posts with a system running a non-CentOS kernel.

IMHO that's not what CentOS wants here. It's certainly not what 3rd 
party repo providers would want either.

Besides, your approach simply won't work. If you were to install an 
edited (patched) repo file set to enabled=0, the first time a user runs 
'yum update' and the repo file gets updated from the repo the user will 
be back at the repo's default settings regardless of how the distro may 
or may not have initially patched the repo file.

It's simply not your config file to alter so if you don't like the 
defaults don't ship it. Make that a criteria from the start together 
with guidance on what defaults are acceptable for inclusion.