Development -> Release use of --oldpackage

[Andy Green]

Richard Hally wrote:

> My most common use case is (running rawhide):
>  go into /var/cache/yum/development, see what the previous package was 
> and 'rpm -Uvh --oldpackage <previous package>

Last time I was on Rawhide, I guess it was FC3, I had a lot of 
excitement trying to "sidegrade" the Rawhide box to the released version 
when it came out.  It seemed that my box stayed too long on Development, 
and I had packages that were newer than the released version.  These 
packages were not overwritten by the released set even when Anaconda was 
told to do an "upgrade" or an "install" over the existing installation.

Now I am once again on Development on this laptop (for the first time 
Hibernate is working, thanks to everyone!), it occurs to me there is a 
use for an option that just installs from a packageset regardless if it 
is newer or older.

On a related issue, I learned last week about rpmcache and what was 
apparently the old style of repo content distribution based around 
detached RPM headers into a separate RPM database.  Can anyone gifted 
with the Redhat/Fedora instrutional memory of the time (Seth?) summarize 
what drove the migration to a completely separate XML metadata database 
system?  The old way sounds more economic with data and code from what I 
understand of it.

-Andy
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