Choosing YUM Repositories

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sat, 06 Aug 2005 13:08:10 +0800, 國產 Wei-Yee Chan (Made in Chinar) wrote:

> Some repositories include packages that others don't.

True.

> It's not wise to
> mix repositories indiscriminately as packages can clash with one
> another, thereby causing conflicts. 

Less of a problem. Conflicts cause package resolvers [like yum, up2date,
or apt-get] to terminate with a fatal error message and refuse to install
packages.

More of a problem are packages with the same name, but different version
or different release or files in different locations. They cause an
upgrade race between multiple repositories.

Another problem are repositories which rename and replace packages from
Core, introducing a new package namespace and a different ABI, breaking
src.rpms (which obviously do "BuildRequires: somename-devel" and not
"BuildRequires: somename2-devel") and moving away from the [hopefully]
widely tested Core packages.

Very annoying problems are packages with the same name and version, which
are out-of-sync with regard to the applied patches/fixes. Example: 
A package in repository 'A' may include a patch for a segmentation
fault. A package with the same name and version in repository 'B', but
with a higher release, is seen as an upgrade, although it does not include
the patch. The segfault is back.   Other forms of run-time misbehaviour
are possible and have been observed in the wild.

> I'm using Fedora extras with Livna
> and and dries, with no problems.  But then, it really depends on what
> packages U have installed on your system.

Right, and hardly anybody installs and uses all available packages.

I've been told freshrpms.net is very compatible with Extras nowadays.