[packagers] Re: [users] The demise of the repotag

[Dag Wieers]

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, Mark Hull-Richter wrote:

> On 4/19/07, Dag Wieers <dag at wieers.com> wrote:
>
> > As I expected and briefed before, Fedora and EPEL will not adopt a
> > repotag. With that they refuse to accept or consider the existence of a
> > diversity of repositories, or at least promote themselves to be the one
> > and only upstream provider of packages.
>
> I'm a little new to this world of repos and repotags - what are the
> implications of this to the users, like all of us?  How does it impact
> our use of repositories?

A repotag is a small string put in the release-tag of an RPM packages. For 
RPMforge this is the '.rf.' part in the filename.

Having this consistently makes it obvious from a directory listing, 
package listing or from a copy&pasted output where a package came from.
Much like what the disttag is used for. A '.el5.' means a package was made 
specifically for RHEL5 or CentOS5.

Now without such a repotag, 2 packages from different sources may be 
exactly identical in filename and version. They would appear to be the 
same and for a tool like Yum or Apt it becomes hard (currently impossible) 
to know which one is the one it needs. Especially with incompatible 
packages this would be a real problem.

So a repotag has 2 distinct purposes:

 - Making RPM packages (filenames and versions) unique

 - Identification of packages which simplifies package management and 
   troubleshooting (copyp&pasted output)

Even though the repotag is arbitrary and can be faked (just like the 
disttag), because packages are being signed this is not a real concern.
Not having a repotag would be as insecure as having one.

Another non-valid concern made was that a repotag would change the version 
comparison. But since there is no clear way how to compare 2 releases from 
2 different sources anyway, it doesn't impose any problem whether there is 
a repotag or there isn't.

That's about it. A repotag is just very convenient for users and 
packagers.

Kind regards,
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]