[CentOS] Re: Re: Re: are RPMForge and EPEL compatible?

Fri Dec 7 10:27:52 UTC 2007
Dag Wieers <dag at centos.org>

On Thu, 6 Dec 2007, Rex Dieter wrote:

> Les Mikesell wrote:
> > Rex Dieter wrote:
> > > Les Mikesell wrote:
> > >
> > > And is there a way to get my whole
> > list of packages from this repository easily, like an 'rpm -qa |grep
> > .plus would identify what I have from the centosplus repo?
>
> This is a problem space that sure could use some love and attention, with
> better solutions and tools.  No doubt about it.  And before anyone suggests
> it, repotags are not the end-all-be-all solution here, imo.  We can/should
> be able to do (much) better.

Targetted for Fedora Core 9 ?

Nothing can replace the simplicity and ease of a repotag, which is a
solution that works today on EL2, EL3, EL4 and EL5. Any other solution
discussed over the last year does not exist and is nobody working on.

Despite this, the outcome on the LinuxTag meeting with Fedora/EPEL was
that there was no good reason not to use repotags since they make the
package name (= the part that the depsolver compares and uses) unique.

Feel free to come up with a solution, Rex. I no longer believe you will.

I have been looking for other reasons why Fedora/EPEL does not want to do
it and have concluded that they directly benefit from the confusion about
the origin of a package: people that cannot easily identify that a package
comes from EPEL are less inclined to blame EPEL or remove the package.

So give a user a repotagged package and a non-repotagged package, the use
may choose the non-repotagged one. EPEL wins.

-- 
--   dag wieers,  dag at centos.org,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
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