Dropping the repotag

[Axel Thimm]

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
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/epel-devel-list/attachments/20070318/ff56662e/attachment.sig>