[CentOS] Re: Mixing RPMforge and EPEL (Was: EPEL repo)

Dag Wieers dag at wieers.com
Wed Aug 1 15:04:50 UTC 2007


On Wed, 1 Aug 2007, Les Mikesell wrote:

> Feizhou wrote:
> > Les Mikesell wrote:
> > > Dag Wieers wrote:
> > >
> > > > You may argue that that is a good thing. But Fedora is a different beast
> > > > than RHEL. People may want stable packages, or current packages and a
> > > > single repository (with the tools we have today) cannot provide this.
> > >
> > > But people may want _both_ the stable package and the current package on
> > > the same machine at the same time.  Having a hint of the difference barely
> > > visible in the package name doesn't help a bit.
> > 
> > I cannot see how it is possible to install both the stable package and
> > current package.
> 
> How many kernel packages do you have installed?  All it takes is to not write
> the same-named file in the same place as the other package.  In some cases
> there are practical problems where a service needs to listen on a default port
> and you can't run 2 at once, or the init script is expected to live in a
> certain place so we'd need a creative solution, but most files could just have
> their own unique path and you'd pick the one you want with your PATH setting -
> something well understood decades ago.

RPM allows it, but for anything else the depsolver needs to be modified to 
allow it. And even if you allow it, there is no policy of what needs to be 
updated and how. For the kernel there is a lot of specialized logic to 
make it work.

While I agree with you that it is possible (in RPM) and can be useful, I 
do not agree that it is a solution to the repository mixing problem.


> > > > Besides, it punishes people who did not have an alternative back when
> > > > Fedora Extras refused to do RHEL packages and only had RPMforge to fall
> > > > back on.
> > > >
> > > > At least that's my point of view.
> > >
> > > I think you are making too much out of name differences for things that
> > > can clobber each other and not enough about ways to let the different
> > > things co-exist - on the same machines if you want them, or to let users
> > > choose which they want.  If two same-named packages can conflict, someone
> > > did something wrong and the issue shouldn't be about who did it but how to
> > > avoid it.
> > 
> > I disagree. If I was going to roll my own packages in my own repository to
> > overrule the OS repositories, tagging my packages would be essential.
> 
> But the tags are in an inconvenient position to control anything.  How do you
> ensure that you'll get your copies if any other repo adds a newer release?
> Normally you'd want updates to float to the latest.

Correct, you would think Fedora took care of this, right ? But there is 
no interest for Fedora to take care of that because they want to be the 
only repository. It is not something they have an incentive for to fix.

That is exactly the problem. The repotag would be a workaround (and a 
convenient one for users) but the real changes need to be in yum or 
somewhere else. And Fedora does not care, so RHEL will not have it.

I have warned for this on the Feodra mailinglist years ago. There just is 
no interest to have the diversity of more than one repository.

--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]



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