Software Management call for RFEs

[Stijn Hoop]

Hi,

I would like better integration with domain-specific package managers.
By which I mean npm (for node.js), gem (for ruby), pip (for python),
cpan (for perl), pecl/pear (for PHP), CRAN (for R), CTAN (for TeX), and
many more I'm sure.

By integrating RPM with these package managers, I feel it would be
possible to provide a consistent view of the system, as well as a
consistent management interface for sysadmins as opposed to application
developers. The latter I might expect to continue to use the domain
specific package managers, simply because they add value to domain
experts -- but for the common usecase "install this app on the server"
it would be nice to use RPM only.

Another advantage that I see is that it saves Fedora packager manpower
-- if the "translation" is good enough, it should be possible to work
with upstream packages and simply automate the fedora rpm process as
much as possible. Current examples are R2spec and the TeXLive package
scripts.

And maybe, in the future, it might even be possible for new domains to
rely on RPM itself instead of writing Yet-Another-Package-Manager etc.
But again, that is not the goal itself.

To succesfully integrate RPM implies (to me) at least the following,
some of which are already on the feature page:

- convert the basic package metadata from $domain to RPM (it is OK to
  go back to $domain package manager for exotic use cases, but
  list/update/remove packages should be doable from RPM)

- reproducible environment (Gemfile / pip requirements.txt / ...)

- both system- and per-user installation tracked and supported

- more I can't think of right now?

Regards,

--Stijn