yum+mach2 for fedora-development tree pseudo-release

[Panu Matilainen]

On Tue, 1 Mar 2005, seth vidal wrote:
> A couple of minor issues:
>
> yum will install file deps by:
> yum install /path/to/file/you/need
>
> but it won't do virtual provides in that syntax
>
> so 'yum install foo' when foo is not a package name doesn't do anything.
> I compromised on this syntax by adding resolvedep. So you can do:
> 'yum resolvedep foo' which spits back 1 package that provides foo. Then
> you can pass that output to yum install and you're on your way again.
> That's going to require a bit more hacking I think to make it all work.
> There are a fair number of virtual provides in packages that make some
> of this not work.

Heh, oh the memories this reminds me of... Apt had/has seriously tough 
time trying to deal with all the virtual provides in the ways people are 
using it, especially as buildrequires and the build-dep operation's logic 
was something I never could digest really. :)

>
> I could easily add virtual provides support into 'yum install' in
> cvs-HEAD and this problem goes away - I'm just wondering would it make
> more sense to hack yum to make it comply with mach2 or to hack mach2 to
> make it work with yum.

You mean "hack mach to make it work with yum" as in "import yum..." kind 
of thing? If so, I think that's far better approach than invoking it from 
through command line with all the overhead of re-re-re-reading in metadata 
etc - it'd not only improve speed but give far more control over things. 
Regardless of that, supporting virtual provides in 'yum install' would be 
a nice little addition to yum anyway.

 	- Panu -