Yum repros wanted

[Temlakos]

Sean O Sullivan wrote:
> Temlakos wrote:
> 
>> Sean O Sullivan wrote:
>>
>>> The more repo's you want, the more conflicts and dependancy issues 
>>> you will have - it is not a good idea to add every repo you can find.
>>>
>>> Personally, base/updated-released/extras, then dag and freshrpms are 
>>> very reliable I find. atrpms i usually fine, although wouldn't use 
>>> for a server. Other than that wouldn't touch many others - especially 
>>> not livna ( http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/FAQ.php#D )
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Sean
>>>
>>
>> Are you sure about that? The way I heard it, livna and extras were 
>> part of the same mold. Now I'll let Dag and Axel speak for themselves, 
>> but the impression I got from following the link you gave is that they 
>> wouldn't even want you to use extras, just because the extras 
>> maintainers won't "play nice" with them.
> 
> 
> Well for compatibility I decided to take Livna out anyway, I rarely have 
> any issues with what I mensioned, if any arise, it is due to atrpms 
> (however this is rare, and atrpms are also very good, I am in no way 
> critising them).
> 
>> Back to your main point: if I were still using yum or apt, I'd agree 
>> with you--in which case I wouldn't use anything beyond base, 
>> updates-released, extras, and livna, and if I wanted anything from any 
>> other repo I'd wget it and run rpm -Uvh on it. But with the smart 
>> package manager, I can set priorities on the various repos to avoid 
>> such conflicts. Smart will even /repair/ any conflicts that it finds 
>> when I first install it. (Edit->Fix All Problems...)
> 
> 
> Yes I tried smart, and was very impressed very quickily.
> However, I recall I had some problem updating /something/ and for that 
> reason I reverted back to yum ... cannot remember what it was, however I 
> do intend to keep an eye on smart, and will probably go back to it at 
> some point.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Sean
> 

Then I'd like to share with you my experience with obtaining and 
updating mplayer. because that might have a bearing on that particular 
problem that you had.

Mplayer is out in what its developers are afraid might be their last 
version--something about the European Parliament passing a law against 
any player that can play anybody's content. Anyway, FreshRPMS has the 
only version of mplayer that seems actually to work. Livna's version of 
MPlayer just won't load, and won't stay loaded when I try to open a 
video with it.

So I looked up the listing for mplayer in smart, and found that yes, 
FreshRPMS has it, but I had set its priority down to 8, rather than the 
10 I use for base, updates-released, extras, livna, and others.

To fix that problem I granted an /exception/ to FreshRPMS's version of 
mplayer: I declared that /that package alone/ would carry a priority of 
10, equal to that of livna's version, so that smart would take the newer 
of the two versions. You can do that in smart--right-click the package 
name and reassign its priority directly. Since then, smart has obeyed my 
instructions, and I still have a working version of mplayer on my 
system--though I am using livna's version of the mplayer fonts. (They 
are in fact compatible.)

I need livna to provide semi-official support in Fedora for mp3 and any 
other file that Fedora can't have in its official repos, because mp3 is 
not licensed in a way compatible with GNU-GPL.

By the way: smart is up to version 0.36. I took the tarball and 
discovered, to my delight, that the Makefile has a routine not only to 
"make" the program and its C extension, but /also/ to build the RPM! To 
use it, unpack the file (it's a bz2 archive, so you'll have to 
right-click and "open with Archive Manager" to do it), change to that 
directly, and then--not as root, but as an ordinary user--run these two 
commands in this order:

$ make
$ make rpm

Then change to a directly called "dist". You'll have two binary RPM's, a 
source RPM, and even a brand-new tarball.

Then you can issue the command

$ su --command="rpm -Uvh smart*"

Or do what I did:

1.	Set up your very own yum-style repository:

	A.	Create a directory in /var/lib--say, /var/lib/yum.
	B.	Copy the two RPM's to it--and any other RPM that
		you build or acquire.
	C.	Chown all rpm's to root:
# chown root *.rpm
	D.	Chmod all rpm's to 755:
# chmod 755 *.rpm
	C.	Issue this command:

# createrepo /var/lib/yum [or however you named your folder]

2.	In /etc/yum.repos.d/, write a .repo file to point to your new repo. 
Give it a baseurl of "file:///var/lib/yum" or whatever.

3.	Execute the command:

# yum install smart

Then you can run smart, configure it to recognize your RPM installed 
base (you have a channel type just for that) and all your repos, set 
their priorities--and you're in business.

For everyone's information, I followed Michael A. Peters' advice and set 
up an environment to build my own rpm's, which is the best and safest 
way to install java onto an FC4 installation. (The release notes warn 
you not to use Sun's own rpm for java.) After that, I knew I simply 
/had/ to invent a system to manage all those rpm's from smart. So I 
created my own repo. I am very pleased with the results I have obtained.

Temlakos