Call for comments - RPM upgrade

[Ingo T. Storm]

> We should eventually put up 7.2 and 7.3 for a vote after we have a
> thorough analysis of the technical improvements in the latest rpm-4.0.5
> release.  It is true that RPM was less problematic back then, but my
> main concern is the broken nature of rpmvercmp in those older versions.

Which is a big concern if you do a lot of package juggling. In the context
of providing errata, I wouldn't consider this critical.

> Additionally rpm-4.0.4 had *some* deadlock issues that are
> probably gone in the upgrade version.  (Do testing.)

I've seen them in some early betas Aurora SPARC Linux, but never since - and
I can't remember having seen them on x86 at all since 4.0.2 (the update on
rh6.2).

> 1) Some have suggested a rewritten rhn_applet and up2date for RH7.3, RH8
> and RH9.  They suggested that after RHN stops providing software update
> services, perhaps a community based notification service could take its
> place.

Again, I can only speak for RH7.2/7.3: I would leave up2date and the applet
alone and advocate current (current.tigris.org) to the FedoryLegacy users.
It's easy to set up, quite lightweight. A current server run by FedoraLegacy
would be possible, but might need a lot bandwifth and cpu.

> I personally think a centralized service may have trust issues
> like "would you trust your server package information with total
> strangers?"

Exactly the reason why I pay for RHN to get the errata, but distribute them
inhouse with current.

Ingo