[CentOS] Why is yum not liked by some?

Wed Sep 14 18:09:54 UTC 2005
Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu>

On Wednesday 14 September 2005 10:06, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu> wrote:
> > Sounds like an opportunity for someone to write a local
> > repo management app that can pick rsync repos to mirror,
> > selectively freeze packages, and such.  This would be nice.

> But _who_ decides to "freeze"?  I mean, that still does not
> solve the problem of someone wanting an older revision of the
> repository than even the "freeze."

The local repository manager would, perhaps, click on a checkbox that says 
'freeze this package in my local repository 
http://some.local.machine/yum-repo-path' 

Configuration would include the means by which you seed your local repository; 
yam or straight rsync for instance.  Pick some repositories (not unlike the 
baseurl you already have in yum.repos.d/random-repo.repo) to configure, then 
let it populate your local repo.  When you want to freeze a package, you (the 
local repo manager) click 'freeze' next to the package (need some depsolving 
here, since updated versions of other packages might require the ackage to be 
thawed).  Then the local yum clients use this local repo, and the frozen 
packages aren't updated until the local repo manager thaws the package and 
updates his local repo.

No, it doesn't solve time-travel issues.  But it does allow a stop point to be 
set at a particular package(s).

> Which is why I'm working on the simple hack to maintain all
> prior createrepo runs, and add the small logic required to
> support it on the YUM client.

And that's a laudable goal.

But the whole 'maintain a local repository' mantra begs a utility to help one 
maintain a local repo.  And maybe yam can already do all that; don't know.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu