[Bug 507294] [RFE] Allow wildcards/regexps in yum install/upgrade/comps...

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https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=507294





--- Comment #3 from Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot at laposte.net>  2009-06-22 11:53:04 EDT ---
(In reply to comment #2)
> > font(comma-separated font name list|comma-separated style list|comma-separated
> > lang list) (rough mockup that probably needs refining)
> 
>  Very much so, for instance given:
> 
> font(bar,blah|foo,fu|lang=en,lang=el)
> 
> ...you couldn't match the above for arbitrary points with just wildcards.

yep sure, the point is, I don't really care how it ends up looking like, the
main need is to be able to group properties in some way. It may be that the
only way to do it reliably is to pass on wildcards and go regexp. Or
standardise the way multi-valued provides are written, so simple wildcards can
be processed in consistent ways regardless of the namespace. Maybe something
like:

namespace(label1:list-of-values|label2:list-of-values) etc ?

font(family:bar,blah|style:foo,fu|lang:en,fr,el)

> > To have features like font auto-installation work reliably, this matching needs
> > to extend to the package installation selection logic
> 
>  I think what you want to do is put all this inside some PK API. So the
> provides would look something like:

To be honest I'm not really sure about the need to have rpm understand this
syntax (I suspect someone would find uses for it, for example we could add a
dep to the fontconfig package on font(style=regular|lang=en) to make sure we
always install at least one fallback font by default) but I'm quite sure it
should be exposed at the yum level at least. Having apps auto-install fonts
when they find the need in a document is great, but sometimes users want to
install fonts before they've started typing their document :p.

> Because I don't
> think anyone is going to be running "yum install font(dejavusans:*:lang=el)" or
> whatever from the cmd line.

Actually, I'm quite sure people will do. The internet is littered with yum
recipes to install particular fonts (either "here is how to install dejavu
lgc", or "here is how to install every available thai font"). They're all
brittle and break from release to release because packages get renamed, fonts
get replaced, and people have to match on package names instead of what they
really want (a particular font, or fonts for a language, etc)

Now, I know the functional need, but I don't know actual rpm/yum/pk innards, so
I'm not the best person to suggest how the technical part should look like. So
far we've done what the current tools made possible, but we're hitting tooling
limitations.

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