Re: Supported versions

On Tue, 2002-03-19 at 15:54, John Berninger wrote:
>         A final note on Current / up2date versus apt-get:  Current still
> has the same limitation that most apt proponents find objectionable on
> true RHN - it only checks a single source for updated packages.  Apt can
> check multiple authoritative sources, so just make sure you've got your
> flak jacket on when you go into battle.  :)

It should (theoretically, at least) be possible to use the sources stack
in up2date to achieve this.

For the brave and noble amoung you, take a look at the rpmSources.py
file in up2date itself.

Basically, to get the network, cacheing, etc stuff to work "cleanly",
up2date itself can have multiple source _types_ for each chunk of
information that it deals with. It should be possible for a sufficiently
strong python wizard to figure out how to have multiple source _servers_
for each chunk of information that up2date deals with.

There's a couple of traps along the way:

1) I personally hate looking at that file - it gives me a headache.
    (It's pretty dense code, and doesn't have an 80 column average  
     width, which I personally find hard to read)

2) solveing dependencies just got a WHALE of a lot harder.

3) It'd be trick to figure out even something as simple as --showall
with this - what do you do, concatenate all the replies?

4) if solveDep's looks easy to you, imagine what the channels logic will
be. (That should cook your noodle right there).

For all these reasons, and mostly for the fact that I personally don't
need it, I'm not going to pursue this area.

However, if some enterprising individual with strong python skills and
something less than a stranglehold on reality where to want to try it,
I'd help where I could and provide a place to talk about
patches/whatever to the client to deal with multiple servers. At least
with Current, you'd have something to test with.

Once the database stuff hits in 1.1, multiple servers will be the only
advantage of apt over up2date.

> 
-- 
Hunter Matthews                          Unix / Network Administrator
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