Re: yum plugins: installonlypkgs, with wildcard matches

On Tue, 28 Jul 2009, Matt Savona wrote:


> With regards to making these definitions per-repo, it's not strictly
> necessary. I chose that route simply because I liked the idea of only
> enabling the behavior when it was absolutely necessary (ie, when I
> explicitly --enablerepo rubygems). When I push out a yum repo
> configuration via cfengine, I don't need to worry about updating
> yum.conf - I just drop the repo conf file and the behavior I want is
> self-contained.

Fair enough.


> Your second point is actually the way I'd prefer to do this, I just
> don't know how - at least from Yum and other plugin code I've perused.
> I'd much prefer to just wildcard match in the plugin, expand the
> package names on a match and add them to the installonlypkgs list -
> then I never have to deal with modifying the transaction at all. If
> you have any guidance here, that would be appreciated.

For each item in the per-repo config option you find the match in the list 
of available pkgs and add that pkg name to the 
list: base.conf.installonlypkgs


that should be it.

> Just because there's 16000 (and growing) packages, doesn't imply
> they're all installed simultaneously. You're right, it'd get messy. If
> it were really up to me, I wouldn't have this repository at all -
> Rubygems work fine all by themselves. Unfortunately, in our
> environment we use one type of package for everything: RPM. We treat
> Perl modules the same way, except I don't maintain a complete
> repository for that. The issue is that we have multiple teams
> consuming these gems, and everyone requires distinct versions -
> Rubygems by itself will play along happily - but we don't have that
> option. There's more to this discussion, but it's best left at: it is
> the way it is and it can't be changed easily, so we jump through some
> hoops to accommodate the policy.

Understood. I personally agree with a policy that says there is one kind 
of package and that is rpm. A single package mgmt system dramatically 
decreases the mistakes that can be made and places where problems can 
arise. Additionally it allows for a single audit trail which is nothing to 
scoff at.

-sv