On Sun, Mar 18, 2007 at 08:33:44PM +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote: > Why would a __user__ want a repotag? All the users want is that > repositories "just work" when they are enabled and installed from, even if > it is an unusual mix of repositories. That way you could argue that a user doesn't need a release tag as well, right? > A repotag does not contribute anything to achieving that. If the > repotag is abused for RPM version comparison (as the > least-significant part of %release), so packages from one repo > upgrade packages from another repo, that would be really bad. Does any repo do that? I think not. Running a repo with the "lowest" repotag I can assure you that repotags are not abused in the way you imagine them to be. > Similarly bad is it when repositories compete with eachother in what > they contain and when that leads to incompatibilities. That has nothing to do with a repotag, ... > A repotag only attempts at pushing some of the dirt under the > carpet. ... which is why a repotag cannot improve this situation. A repotag is simply for a quick identification of a packge, be it in a simple rpm -qa list or as a package filename. That's all there is to it, it's not a magical compatibility layer. FWIW I would like to be able to distinguish RHEL packages from EPEL by a simple glance. Given RHEL's structure in several layered products I can never be sure whether it's RHEL, RHCS, RHGFS, RHAPPS already. At least when I see an "at", "rf", "centos", "sl", "kde" as a repotag I know it's none of the official stack. So it's not only distinguishing 3rd party repos, it's for distinguishing from the base os, too. And it's a matter of cooperation: Do we want EPEL to cooperate with existing 3rd party repos, or do we want EPEL to not do so and create a new rift? It's so much more a political issue than a technical one. -- Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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