Yum in EPEL [Was: packages that conflict with centos?]

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

On 06.08.2007 16:04, Jeff Sheltren wrote:
> On Jul 27, 2007, at 8:48 AM, Michael DeHaan wrote:
>> I haven't looked at these packages yet, but I'm really glad to see  
>> this work being done. I mentioned this on #epel a few days ago --  
>> lots of folks will be looking for yum to be there.
>>
>> The selfish reason for me to want it is that Cobbler (http:// 
>> cobbler.et.redhat.com) uses it for repository management and is  
>> otherwise broken in EPEL (http://cobbler.et.redhat.com) -- the not  
>> so selfish reason is tons of RHEL4 users are already using yum for  
>> various things (including maintaining their own repositories of  
>> lots of stuff, including, sometimes, updates) and it would be nice  
>> if they could get their yum from EPEL and use yum with EPEL if they  
>> wanted.
> 
> During the EPEL meeting on July 25 -- log here:
> https://www.redhat.com/archives/epel-devel-list/2007-July/msg00225.html
> There was some discussion about problems including yum in EPEL.
> 
> The first issue was that these packages don't mess up CentOS users.   
> Since these packages all have a lower release than those found in  
> CentOS, that should not be a problem since they should never get  
> installed in the first place.

+1

> The second issue was that RHEL 4 users can't use yum for system  
> updates.

Or install packages from EPEL that require deps from RHEL4, as long as
they don't set up their own RHEL-repo (see the other mails from dag on
this topic).

>  Do we need to provide a wiki page explaining to RHEL users  
> that yum is available only to fill dependencies and shouldn't be used  
> directly?  What are people's thoughts on this -- especially those  
> that use RHEL?  Is it confusing to have yum if RHEL can't use it to  
> do system updates?

My preferred solution: add a patch that makes yum *on RHEL only* display
a warning like "you should use up2date on RHEL4 to install packages from
EPEL or update RHEL itself" and add a config option to disabled that
warning for those that use mrepo to set up a RHEL-updates repo.

> I'd like to get this discussed here on the list

List is preferred for such discussions, as it's IMHO to time consuming
to discuss all details in a IRC meeting if they havened been discussed
on the list yet -- if they have and no consensus could be found then
it's in my experience easier to come to an agreement in a IRC meeting.

> so that we can make a  
> decision about it at the next EPEL meeting if needed.

+1 -- it's still on the schedule.

Cu
knurd