Re: Proper metadata format

On Thu, 2008-10-23 at 23:57 -0700, Joshua Bahnsen wrote:
> All,
> 
> I recently undertook the task of creating a perl script to perform a
> task similar to createrepo. My goal was to create something that could
> be used in Windows and did not require the rpm library. I found
> RPM::Header::PurePerl and for the most part it provided me with the
> proper information, however, I did need to extend it slightly. The
> output I created is based on the output of createrepo against a
> particular collection of rpms.
> 

> My question is: Is there a proper standard for the metadata files? I
> have noticed the files distributed by RedHat do not necessarily match
> the files created by SuSE. I have also noticed that if I use
> createrepo against the RedHat Enterprise rpms, I am presented with
> files in a slightly different format. 

Different format? What do you mean?


> Basically what I am looking for is if there is a baseline of required
> items (for example, do all requires need an epoch?). I probably went
> about this backwards, but I want to make sure my resulting xml
> documents are legit. In my testing they work fine, I see the same
> results with the vendor provided files as I do with my own. I would
> appreciate any direction you can provide.

In general, I use yum-metadata-parser as a good tester for the xml. If
it can read them and generate the sqlite dbs then it should be working.

I agree that a simpler verification tool would be worthwhile, though.

-sv