rpm groups and fedora: a modest proposal

[Panu Matilainen]

On Fri, 28 May 2004, seth vidal wrote:

> > > 
> > > Comps is totally unsuitable since it limits you to whatever packages
> > > where known to the distribution at the time of its release. (ie bye bye
> > > third-party packages).
> > 
> > Seconded, I seriously hate the idea of *having* to edit some xml file just 
> > to place a random rpm into some category. 
> 
> but you'd rather edit a spec file and rebuild an rpm to do it?

Yes. How often does a package change it's fundamental functionalities so 
that the grouping would need to be changed? The only times I've had to 
change the group are
a) fixing typos 
b) originally incorrect (non-standard or otherwise silly) entries

Since the rpm contains the information it's set *once*, if it's buried
into some group.xml each repository needs to do the same work again and
again. I've absolutely nothing against having yumgroups.xml or similar as
an extra layer above the information in the package itself to provide a
"friendlier" grouping of things but the package should carry the
information with it. Hmm.. if it had tags (well, keywords) in rpm you 
could even automate the groups.xml generation by just querying the 
packages and sorting them to groups as you please based on the keywords 
they "provide"

	- Panu -