rpm groups and fedora: a modest proposal

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le mer, 26/05/2004 à 14:22 -0400, Jeff Spaleta a écrit :
> On Wed, 26 May 2004 10:49:39 -0400, Brad Smith <brads at redhat.com> wrote:
> > But now it's installed. So suppose I'm cleaning up my system and I run
> > system-config-packages and go looking through the games to see what I'm
> > not using anymore. Or suppose I'm just a user on the system and I'm
> > using some other tool just to see what all is installed. I would expect
> > foo to show up under games, but if it was just downloaded from the web
> > and the various *.xml files are the only sources for grouping
> > information it's not. Best-case scenario it goes into an ugly "Other"
> > category. Worst-case it's ignored.
> 
> Now here we get into the concept of what it means to actually manage
> packages...and package collections.  I was hoping the discussion would
> have gotten to this point sooner.....i've been waiting to beat up this
> point of view.
> 
> I don't think its wise to have a tool treat one-off package installs
> that have to be installed by hand and can not have updates retrieved
> in the same way it treats packages that are managed in collections
> that don't have to be installed by hand and can be updated via methods
> known by the management tool entity.

I'm afraid the one-off packages you dismiss so easily cover a rather
large spectrum of current rpm use, from single-rpm upstream project
releases to nosrc.rpms, packages downloaded directly using the links in
the rhn interface, trivial packages we all make up every once in a while
that are way too ugly to submit to fedora, etc

Moreover sometimes project names collide (most (in)famous example not so
long ago firebird the browser and firebird the database), so using a the
name as a single key is very unwise (esp. when they collisions are bound
to occur the most frequently in obscure repositories/sources). For
example, what is crimson ?

And managing packages also means the poor sod who gets to administer a
system installed years ago by someone who choose to pursue personal
enlightment in a nepalese lamasery since. And I can tell you when you
get there you're pretty happy to have groups or any other sort of hint
that gives you a starting point instead of a big whack on the head like
"others, you stoopid admin, why didn't you think of it before going
outside my repository" (did I tell you you had 30 min to uninstall
something without breaking the system since the disks are now
overflowing ?)

The conclusion of all this is I do support, use and contribute to strict
homogenous projects like fedora.us, but expecting real-world systems to
restrict their software usage to such sources is akin to expect any
given car to be as scratchless and clean after a year of use as the day
it rolled out of the factory.

Hell, you'll be lucky if all your systems are even 100% rpmified.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot
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