[CentOS] are RPMForge and EPEL compatible?

Stephen John Smoogen smooge at gmail.com
Thu Dec 6 18:17:11 UTC 2007


On Dec 4, 2007 11:12 AM, Florin Andrei <florin at andrei.myip.org> wrote:
> Following Fabian's blog post re: RPMForge being rebuilt for EL5, I've a
> question:
>
> Are there any compatibility problems between RPMForge and EPEL? In other
> words, if I enabled EPEL previously, will I be able to enable RPMForge
> as well without running into trouble?
>

Speaking from a technical standpoint, the biggest issue with mixing
any different repos is that they use different packaging guidelines.
The hyperbole case:  package repo A uses  SuSE standards, repo B were
to use Fedora 1.x standards, repo C were to use current Fedora
standards, and repo D were to use Mandrake standards.. you would end
up with either file conflicts or worse yet lack of conflicts but
hidden requirements (script from A expects files to be in
/opt/blah/bin for some reason but you got that package from E because
it was newer and it places things in /srv/snozzberry/bin instead.

The more common case I have found has been odd dependency chains from
one side or another because of unclear guidelines. In most production
environments, I tend to choose one repository and then work with that
one only to get the job done. For some things it was ATrpms, others
DAG, and other EPEL. If the item I needed was in one but not the
other.. getting it into the one repository I was working with was
easier than trying to figure out how to find any unknown unknowns in
hidden conflicts.

As DAG has said several times in mailling lists.. the proper thing to
do is not use a repository directly anyway. You should have an
internal mirror of the main repo, and then several sub-repo's of just
the packages you want your systems to have. You should have a testing
routine where you take new packages test that they work with your
environment and then push them out from the sub-repos. He has written
several tools to make this possible..

-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- CSIRT/Linux System Administrator
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"



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