[Fedora-packaging] RFC: Creating meta group packages via comps

[Panu Matilainen]

On Tue, 29 Aug 2006, seth vidal wrote:

> On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 06:27 +1200, Michael J. Knox wrote:
>> seth vidal wrote:
>>> On Tue, 2006-08-29 at 11:13 -0700, Christopher Stone wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> It should be really easy to make a script that builds metagroup
>>>> packages from comps, no?
>>>>
>>>> This will allow someone to install a group such as kde/gnome as an rpm
>>>> package and when packages are removed/added/changed in the comps
>>>> groups, the meta group package also changes, and the user gets the
>>>> appropriate changes.
>>>>
>>>> I don't think this is possible now with the groupinstall feature in
>>>> yum which IMO is a bad feature since it should be done with meta group
>>>> packages as I describe.
>>>
>>> So you want to make packages based on what is in comps?
>>>
>>> Whats the point of that if we can just read the comps information
>>> itself?
>>
>> Not if you use smart or apt.. these tools don't use comps.xml
>>
>
> That's up to them, isn't it? Ask the application maintainer.

Apt used to have support for comps.xml with the previous format of 
comps.xml in the form of a plugin and it's certainly on the todo-list to 
resurrect the functionality one way or the other.

As for metapackages, JUST SAY NO. I've been down that path, they are 
nothing short of hidous to deal with. Carefully handcrafted metapackage(s) 
*might* make sense in some specific environments / cases but automatically 
generated humongous dep-bloat comps-metapackages are nothing but pain, 
pain, pain.

 	- Panu -