[tools] mrepo and repository metadata

[Dag Wieers]

On Mon, 10 Dec 2007, Tom G. Christensen wrote:

> Edward Rudd wrote:
> > On Dec 7, 2007, at 1:06 PM, Dag Wieers wrote:
> >
> > > I am announcing a change I would like to do that will impact how mrepo
> > > works, but before doing it I would like feedback from users.
> > >
> > > Currently mrepo creates repositories named RPMS.repo and puts all RPMs
> > > inside this directory. That works well for apt, yum and old-yum metadata.
> > > The problem is that for SLES (and specifically NLD9) it needs a different
> > > directory structure.
> > >
> > > For that reason I was looking to change the directory structure that mrepo
> > > creates. What do people think if we change in an upcoming version the
> > > directory structure from:
> > >
> > >     dist-arch/
> > >         RPMS.repo1/
> > >         RPMS.repo2/
> > >         disc1/
> > >         disc2/
> > > to:
> > >     dist-arch/
> > >         apt/
> > >             RPMS.repo1/
> > >             RPMS.repo2/
> > >         iso/
> > >             disc1/
> > >             disc2/
> > >             disc1.iso
> > >             disc2.iso
> > >         repomd/
> > >             repo1/
> > >             repo2/
> > >         you/
> > >             repo1/
> > >                 i586/
> > >                 noarch/
> > >                 src/
> > >             repo2/
> > >                 i586/
> > >                 noarch/
> > >                 src/
> > >         yum/
> > >             repo1/
> > >             repo2/
> > >
> > > And depending on what metadata you enable, it will create that specific
> > > directory for you.
> >
> > Hmm..  How about an option to maintain the *old* directory structure except
> > for YOU?
> > example:
> >     dist-arch/
> >         RPMS.repo1/
> >         RPMS.repo2/
> >         iso/  (This is ok, kinda separates the ISOs out a little)
> >             disc1/
> >             disc2/
> >             disc1.iso
> >             disc2.iso
> >         you/
> >             repo1
> >                 i586/
> >                 noarch/
> >                 src/
> >
> > As Personally I really like the short URLs for pointing my systems to for
> > updates.
> >
> Me too and I like this proposal alot.
>
> Also I dislike having to specify the metadata type in the url since it's
> redundant for apt/yum/repomd, so let's only require that when it absolutely
> can't be avoided.

Fair enough, but that makes the logic much more complicated :-/
Also, some people dislike the archaic RPMS.<name> naming that genbasedir
(apt) requires. And since that format is less and less useful (only for
people using the old up2date tool or an old apt binary).

But ok, we'll keep how it is. This means when generating metadata, the
part that creates the directory structure needs to do that based on the
metadata-type (and know that some of the metadata types have an equal
layout). Sigh :)

-- 
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]