[Spacewalk-list] Feature suggestion: refer to external repositories

[Covil, K (Kim)]

-----Original Message-----
From: spacewalk-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:spacewalk-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Mike McCune
Sent: 30 June 2008 18:02
To: Covil, K (Kim)
Cc: 'spacewalk-list at redhat.com'
Subject: Re: [Spacewalk-list] Feature suggestion: refer to external repositories

Covil, K (Kim) wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I think it would be really useful if Spacewalk could refer to external
> repositories rather than have to maintain a copy of all RPMs itself. It
> could retrieve repository headers in the same way yum does, and when you
> select to install a package on a subscribed system, the system could be
> given the external repository URL to download from. A further
> enhancement to this would allow an internal web proxy url to be
> specified to allow squid or such like to provide local caching for a
> network. This would move Spacewalk more to managing systems and what
> packages they have installed than managing the actual packages
> themselves. It would also dramatically cut down the local storage
> requirements.
>

To put it in Spacewalk terms:

Create a channel that gets its content from somewhere else.  Any
requests for content from that channel get proxied to the real source.

This is a good idea, something we have discussed internally but haven't
gone anywhere with.

Mike
--
Mike McCune
mmccune AT redhat.com
Engineering               | Portland, OR
RHN Satellite             | 650.567.9039x79248

-----

 I think it might help a quicker and wider uptake of Spacewalk as I am sure there are people out there who want to manage what packages are installed on all their systems, but don't want to manage the packages themselves and don't have any custom packages to manage either.

It might also help the integration of non-rpm distributions. Have a way of mapping from package NVRE to URL and don't care about whether it is an RPM or a deb or a tgz.

You could then start breaking Spacewalk down into a repository manager component and a system manager component that could be managed/developed separately.

Regards,

Kim

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