Hello all, Over the past few months I have begun using new features in yum that support creating local repos that contain a mix of metadata from various upstream repositories without actually hosting the upstream packages. The general method of doing this is described here:
http://skvidal.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/creating-a-repo-of-arbitrary-pkgs-at-arbitrary-urls/ So I can snag a few needed RPMs from EPEL, other upstream repos, and locally hosted RPMs to create one repository for users to configure and get all the bits they need for a particular purpose. This has worked great until recent EPEL updates landed and I discovered that EPEL does not retain any non-current RPMs in its repositories. That instantly breaks the "local" repository metadata that contains links to upstream packages that have been removed. By keeping even just one previously released version of the package in the EPEL repos there could be a smooth transition for repos like mine. I suspect as things develop over time more people will be constructing repos in this fashion. A second observation about the current state of the EPEL repos is that if an EPEL update causes things to break and needs to be reverted it is much easier for all involved if at least the previous version of the package remains in the repo to be used for a downgrade by the user of the repository. For these reasons I'd like to request that EPEL adopt a repository policy that better support features of yum in use today and that makes recovery from the inevitable but rare occasions where downgrades are required by the end user simple. Keeping one or two previous versions of packages would accomplish both I think. Thanks, John _______________________________________________ epel-devel-list mailing list [email protected] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/epel-devel-list
