Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
On 03/20/2009 03:38 PM, Lyos Gemini Norezel wrote:
> Isn't it possible to figure that out with a bit of bash programming?
> Eg., use the 'comm' command.
> "comm Compare two sorted files line by line"
>
> and, if different, a diff could be generated to show you exactly what's
> different.
>
> Doesn't seem like much of a hassle to me.
>
Are you volunteering to do the work then?
I'm not much of a bash programmer (or any kind of programmer, really...
last time I could, legitimately, call myself a programmer was back in
the 8086,
6502, etc ASM days), but I'd be willing to give it a shot if there
is/would be
enough interest in such a tool.
If I had infrastructure support, I could even help setup the script to email
you the diffs when needed, provided such a script is setup on the koji
boxen.
> How difficult would it be to add functionality in yum:
> a.) to store the license value of each program, and
> b.) to integrate a license reader for easy access/reading?
>
I'm going to go out on a limb and say this isn't what we want. It will
just bloat the yum metadata for a rather minimal benefit.
Perhaps yum could store the values in a text/db file that another program
(say %license_reader) could import?
Returning to the original problem, I'd rather see a transaction
workflow
like this:
* Look at what a package has marked as a 'license file' (NOTE: RPM
doesn't really have support for this yet)
Pity. A %license (ie., like the %doc) field would be nice to have.
* Compare it against the set of known "Generic" licenses.
* If it is an exact match, replace it with a symlink to the Generic license.
Now, the problem is that if you do this in yum, you'll break rpm
verification of any package handled in such a way.
Oh? Why is that?
It might be possible to have RPM do this automagically, but I suspect
they'd think it is a
monstrous hack. There are RPM devs lurking on this list, I wonder if they will chime in.
I'd like to hear their thoughts on this, too.
Lyos Gemini Norezel