On Sun, 28 Nov 2004, Michael A. Peters wrote: > I will say that I specifically do not like the fact that some of the popular > repositories out there offer packages that REPLACE Fedora Core packages in the > same repository as their add on packages - they really should separate those > out to a different repository so that users like me who want to think long and > hard before replacing a core package won't have to worry about that. Fedora > Extras does not replace Core packages, it is safe to use. When it is available > ;) Ok, this has come up several times and I should make a FAQ out of it. Why do people assume that the repository maintainer should be appointed of the burden of managing 2 or more repositories to just fullfil the way users want to use a repository ? To me, this should be a feature of Yum and Apt. David Parsley (of TaoLinux fame) has a patch for Yum that exactly allows to protect the base system (core packages). You can say, this and this repository I consider the core repository and it will never allow to replace a package from these by one from another repository. The implementation at this point has 1 problem case (when a non core package requires a core package), that will probably never get fixed since Seth (author of Yum) made it clear he was not interested in this feature and David sees no use in making it work for 100% if it will never get merged anyway. Apt allows this by use of pinning packages/repositories (a feature that Yum does not have either) although the configuration if Apt's pinning functionality is a major disaster and should be part of a developer's hall of shame all by itself :) Summary: I don't think a repository maintainer should suffer because applications lack functionality that users want. Especially if it can be automated fairly easily (ie. the path of the least amount of work). BTW the core packages that are replaced (at least from the RPMforge project, FreshRPMS, Dries, Dag and PlanetCCRMA) are minor, only for leaf-packages (not libraries) and if there's a real need. My website has a Rationale attached to each of these packages. Kind regards, -- dag wieers, dag@xxxxxxxxxx, http://dag.wieers.com/ -- [Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]
