[CentOS] are RPMForge and EPEL compatible?

Jim Perrin jperrin at gmail.com
Wed Dec 5 02:47:01 UTC 2007


On Dec 4, 2007 2:51 PM, Akemi Yagi <amyagi at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 4, 2007 11:01 AM, Jim Perrin <jperrin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > EPEL has stated that playing nicely with other repos is not a goal of
> > theirs. I would consider them a 'single source' repo. If you're using
> > them, don't use any other 3rd party repos.
>
> Isn't this a little too harsh?  With proper use of the yum priorities
> plugin, wouldn't it be possible to use stuff from EPEL together with
> other 3rd party repos?

I didn't really mean this to be harsh, just my (usually unwanted) assessment.

It's not that they do conflict necessarily, but that the chance for a
conflict or bum update is there. Take for example nagios. This package
is listed by nagios.org as being distributed via dag/rpmforge, though
EPEL has it too. The epel build separates things out far more than
they need to be (one package for each plugin). This isn't how rpmforge
does it. Now if you install nagios from epel, and you're using
rpmforge also, whichever one updates to the latest version first is
where you get it from. In this case, it will well and truly hork up
your nagios install.

You can (and I do) use both together, but to safely do so, you have to
use yum priorities or protectbase, as well as some exclude/include
statements to get things to really and truly play nice without the
chance for stepping on toes.

If you're careful, you can do this with absolutely no problem
whatsoever. Both repos have excellent folks working them. It's the
users I don't trust much. There are simply too many folks who want
(and somewhat rightly so) to be able to enable a repo with no fuss,
get the package they want, and not have to worry about the
repositories eating their software later without doing a
priority/include/exclude dance.


-- 
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell



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