which repos to use?

[Michael Schwendt]

On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 18:08:41 -0500, Christopher J. Bottaro wrote:

> Hello,
> As of now, I use the yum.conf from fedorafaq.org.  I commented out the
> following:
> livna-testing
> livna-unstable
> fedora.us-testing
> fedora.us-unstable
> I'm tired of having mplayer crash on me.
> 
> That being said, I'm not getting enough packages.  So I scrolled down a bit
> further in my yum.conf and i notice the following repos commented out:
> freshrpms
> dag
> dries
> newrpms
> atrpms-stable/good/testing/bleeding
> But there is a comment above these repos saying that they might conflict
> with livna and fedora.us.

Or vice versa. 
 
> How do I know which repos conflict with other repos? 

There are different kinds of conflicts. If package names or package
contents conflict prior to installation, the result is a broken
dependency chain, and you get an error message since Yum or Apt-Rpm
fail/refuse to install the packages. If packages from one repository
upgrade packages from a different repository or even upgrade Fedora
Core, you can run into problems after installation (e.g. but not
limited to unresolved symbols, run-time instability, build-time
incompatibilities, missing or displaced files).

> Why is this so complicated?

There is no global standard on giving packages the same name and on
making the package contents be the same for packages from different
packagers. Different repositories are controlled by different people
with different--sometimes controversial--packaging philosophies.
Inter-repository compatibility would be feasible, but IMHO stops when
repositories upgrade eachother or upgrade Fedora Core. To increase the
problem, fedora.us adheres to the Fedora Project objective of not
packaging software with patenting or licencing issues, and
rpm.livna.org (which fills that hole to some degree) does not violate
licences/copyrights. Both repositories work with a community based
package submission and approval process, where contributors must
review and approve eachothers packages prior to release, see e.g.
http://fedora.us/QA and http://bugzilla.livna.org/QA -- this is an
area where more contributors are needed and where individuals step up
to maintain individual packages religiously.

> So what do I do?  Comment out the livna repos and add some others (which??). 
> Then when I'm done installing the codecs, recomment them out and re-add the
> livna repos?  There has got to be a better way, I might as well compile
> from source...its actually less of a hassle.

Some users use multiple yum.conf.foo files for different sets of
repositories and run yum with the -c option to install/update from
those repos. None of the repos contains everything.

-- 
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