[CentOS] Re: Why is yum not liked by some? -- CVS analogy (and why you're not getting it)

[Les Mikesell]

On Sat, 2005-09-10 at 11:23, Scot L. Harris wrote:
> > 
> > 1.  It might be good if you could pass a date as a command line option
> > to yum ... and have yum not consider anything after that date as being
> > in the repo.
> > 
> > That is a good suggestion for the yum mailing list:
> > https://lists.linux.duke.edu/mailman/listinfo/yum
> 
> Which fails if the repo you are pointing to has to restore the repo
> files and the datetime stamp changes....

If you don't restore in a way that maintains the timestamp, every
mirror is going to have to suck a fresh copy of the whole
repository.  I'd expect the maintainers to already be careful
about that.

> IMHO a completely different application should be used.  This
> application is mostly a database that tracks a list of rpms.  If you
> want to build a copy of a system you select the particular snapshot (the
> list of rpm versions you decided was the image) and the new utility
> proceeds to pull those rpms from the repo and install them on the target
> system.  This new application would allow you to create multiple
> snapshots and select which one you wanted to use.

That would be better in the sense that it could detect errors
like files being removed from the repository.  If the
repository only has additions, the timestamp is all
you need to recreate the list of rpms that were present at
any time.  If you are going to the trouble of doing something
more complicated, it should involve tying repository update
'sets' of rpms together so that a client could tell if
all needed files were present at a mirror site instead of
just failing dependencies when a partial update requires
a missing file.

> Trying to cram this into yum is IMHO going to make yum overly complex
> and more difficult to use.  

Repeatable operations are more than just a nice idea in
the computer world...  And making everyone who wants a
repeatable yum update store a whole repository snapshot
for every point they need just doesn't seem like an
efficient way to get that.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com