RPM roadmapping

[n0dalus]

On 7/30/07, Gilboa Davara <gilboad at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> /+1. Wget is a sound option.
>

I'm sure that the rpm developers originally considered using an
external program but decided that it would be better to have an
internal http/ftp client.

If we start stripping out various bits of RPM and replacing them with
external libraries, we are making bootstrapping a headache. RPM is
used to install wget and other external libraries in the first place,
so having rpm depend on them makes things messy.

Maybe instead of removing the features, they could be left in, but
when an external program or library that does the job better is
installed, rpm detects it at runtime and uses it instead.

This way there is the best of both worlds:
- Basic support for x (eg, http) is provided in rpm, allowing you to
use x before a more complete implementation is installed.
- The code for x can be simplified, since it should no longer be
necessary to build in a full x implementation and handle corner cases.
- Once a better implementation is installed, rpm uses it by default,
and the inbuilt code for it is never executed.

n0dalus.