[CentOS-devel] Is it possible to merge elrepo.org contribute to centos main repository?

[Les Mikesell]

On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 7:31 AM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic <centos at plnet.rs> wrote:
>
> My understanding is that nothing more then allowing Cloud people to work
> in one/several SIG's will EVER going to change in CentOS, so there is no
> point in even trying. Especially not for newbies/Desktops. CentOS distro
> will remain user-unfriendly until Sun turns off, and as consequence it
> will remain a distro of choice for RHEL admins and no one else. Sad but
> fact of life. It has me thinking that one option is to ditch actual
> CentOS and use something CentOS like, maybe SL or Russian ROSA, so if I
> help someone I do not have to spill blood and waste time all the time. I
> already lost many business opportunities by standing my ground in "I
> only use CentOS", so I might even think about learning Debian way and
> cover both Desktop and Server users with one knowledge and expertise.

You are going to want packages on a desktop for media playing, etc.
that won't ever be in EPEL because of policies that can't change.  So
you might as well stat with ubuntu or mint.

> Only way to make things easier for newbies/Desktop use is to create
> repository that will have release info on all third party repositories,
> so you give newbies instruction like
>
> yum install http://<link to single release file>
> yum install epel-release
> yum install elrepo-release
> etc.

But here is the problem.  If you use more than epel and elrepo you
have no assurance that the 3rd 3rd party repo will stay coordinated
with epel (which you'll almost certainly need).   The more you add,
the more chances there are for duplication of package names that
aren't really the same packages or build.  And eventually you'll run
into a conflict in updates or the update will pull in a version of
something with surprising differences - and not having that kind of
breakage is the main reason to start with CentOS in the first place.
If you were advising someone else how to set up their first Centos
box, think about how long that conversation has to be, and how strange
it all seems that the repositories set up to help people do not stay
coordinated with each other and thus are likely to eventually cause
trouble.  Even ones that don't replace core packages don't track each
other.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com