RPM roadmapping

[Panu Matilainen]

On Sat, 28 Jul 2007, Robert Scheck wrote:

> Hello Mike,
>
> On Fri, 27 Jul 2007, Mike Chambers wrote:
>> BUT, upon saying all that, is there a way to create, make, or use some
>> sort of restore point, to get rpm back in shape if a library or
>> something gets out of wack?  Maybe a rpm --backup option that can be
>> used to backup rpm at a certain point.  Then somehow it can be brought
>> back to that state, even if it's a tar'd file, gzipped or whatever?
>> Reason to have it that way is due to rpm not being functional or allowed
>> to do anything because some library or whatever got screwed up, and you
>> have to reinstall the OS instead of just a quick restore.
>
> I think, you're looking for the rollback features being already part of
> rpm5.org for a longer time. What does this feature do? When you're updating
> or ereasing a package, it creates a package of the changed one. It's more
> or less equivalent to your expected tarball or gzipped one. Please notice,
> that of course this rollback rpm is not the same rpm as installed before,
> it is just a copy of what was in filesystem and was covered by the package.
>
> IIRC this feature was introduced in November 2005 at rpm5.org. You're able
> to extract things from this package my the help of rpm2cpio/cpio similar to
> a tarball. It's a nice feature which saved my ass in the past a couple of
> times, yes.

Repackaging for rollback is an *ancient* feature of rpm, goes back all the 
way to rpm 4.0.0.

 	- Panu -