Re: rpm & ssh - Will the 2 be incorporated w/ each other soon?

[Jeff Johnson <jbj JBJ ORG>]

On Thu, Feb 15, 2001 at 08:34:23AM -0600, Ian Alexander wrote:
> 
> 
> Jeff Johnson wrote:
> > 
> > - The major impediment to adding protocol support to rpm is one of
> >   taste and design:
> > 
> >     Should rpm have support for any (including FTP/HTTP) protocols at all?
> > 
> 
> 
> Someone else might have an example why this might be useful, but my
> first instinct is to say no; let other utilities handle the "fetching"
> of packages over the network.  There doesn't seem to be any real gain
> from adding the protocols into rpm; just use a second utility (rsync,
> sup, scp, ftp, etc) to get the packages.
> 

This is true for only package transport, rpm could certainly use transport
to enhance discovery of packages needed to resolve dependencies for example.

There's also the issue of bandwidth, as transport outside of rpm requires
entire packages to be moved, only to sometimes be rejected because, for example,
a newer package has already been installed. I have a handful of bugs related
to this issue in bugzilla. There's the issue of globbing used to specify a
set of packages to be installed as well, as transport outside of rpm knows
little about what install policies will be applied to the set of packages.

Don't worry, I can argue the other side equally fluently :-)

73 de Jeff

-- 
Jeff Johnson	ARS N3NPQ
jbj@jbj.org	(jbj@redhat.com)
Chapel Hill, NC