[CentOS] Dag's comment at linuxtag

[Les Mikesell]

Radu-Cristian FOTESCU wrote:

> 
> RPMRepo is the best proof that collaboration is close to impossible.

Collaboration isn't exactly the point - in fact the differences are a good 
thing.  There are legitimate reasons (besides the obvious differences of 
opinions) for incompatibly different versions of things to exist and to be 
wanted on different machines.  The problem is not so much that these differences 
exist, but that the potential users (A) don't have a good way to know what the 
differences are and why they might want one version over another, and (B) the 
distro tools are not good at all at maintaining updates from a bunch of 
different repositories.

> And ElRepo is the best proof that other small repos could arise, and
> they have a reason to exist.
> 
> But all this is on the "expenses" (not pecuniary, but *nervous*) of
> the end user, who will get confused and who might also experience
> system breakage. (No, priorities don't fix everything that easily.)

Exactly - but it's not the repo's fault that your system is easily broken.  It 
is that the system was designed to only give you one choice and can't even track 
where a package came from to get updates only from the same place.   But it was 
unrealistic to ever believe that one choice would be enough, particularly when 
the base repository has policies that dictate what can be there.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com