Thoughts on JPackage, Fedora Core, gcj, etc.

[Ian Pilcher]

Something that's been bouncing around in my head for awhile now...

What do folks think of adding an additional "provides" to packages that
provide gcj libraries.  The Fedora Core version of tomcat5, for example,
could provide "tomcat5(gcj)" or "gcj(tomcat5)", presumably versioned.

This wouldn't do anything by itself, but it would give higher level
tools, such as yum, the information needed to apply the policies set by
system administrators -- prefering the latest version, prefering gcj
versions, etc.

Thoughts?

[Anthony Green]

On Thu, 2005-11-10 at 01:31 -0600, Ian Pilcher wrote:
> What do folks think of adding an additional "provides" to packages that
> provide gcj libraries.  The Fedora Core version of tomcat5, for example,
> could provide "tomcat5(gcj)" or "gcj(tomcat5)", presumably versioned.
>
> This wouldn't do anything by itself, but it would give higher level
> tools, such as yum, the information needed to apply the policies set by
> system administrators -- prefering the latest version, prefering gcj
> versions, etc.

I'm kind of clueless in this area.  Can you give an example of how these
tags would be used?

AG

[Ian Pilcher]

Anthony Green wrote:
> I'm kind of clueless in this area.  Can you give an example of how these
> tags would be used?

The idea is to enable system administrators to define policies for
JPackage/Fedora Core co-existence.  For example, one administrator may
prefer to always have the latest version of the underlying package;
another may prefer to always have the gcj version, if available.
There's currently no way for yum, or similar tools, to distinguish gcj
packages from non-gcj packages.

This would only be a first step, but I think it's a necessary step.

[Gary Benson]

Ian Pilcher wrote:
> What do folks think of adding an additional "provides" to packages
> that provide gcj libraries.  The Fedora Core version of tomcat5, for
> example, could provide "tomcat5(gcj)" or "gcj(tomcat5)", presumably
> versioned.

If aot-compile-rpm did end up integrated in rpm then these
dependencies could be added automatically.  The alternative
(adding them manually) is too painful to think about.

Cheers,
Gary