Software Management call for RFEs

[Jan Zelený]

Since you have already sent the email, all those requests that make sense are 
in one way or another on the list of RFEs I referred to. If you are missing 
something there, feel free to let me know.

Thanks
Jan

On 22. 5. 2013 at 22:18:58, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> [This is a copy of an email I sent to an internal Red Hat list last month]
> 
> In no particular order:
> 
> (1) Yum should not be so slow.  In particular "yum install" takes ages
> compared to "apt-get install".  I don't want to argue about how yum
> has to download metadata or whatever, the fact of the matter is the
> yum experience is slow and the apt experience is faster.  Play with
> Debian some time to see what I mean.
> 
> (2) DNF's dependency resolver should be the default.
> 
> (3) RPM's spec file format needs to be redone using a Real Parser.  At
> the moment it has all sorts of strange corner cases (for example, how
> to define a macro containing an arch-dependent list?).  It'd be a good
> opportunity to fix brokenness such as "global" meaning "define", lack
> of direct support for configuration flags, writing "0%{?rhel}",
> complexity of non-trivial %setup's, etc.
> 
> (4) Get rid of %{bindir} etc.  There's no need for it.  It didn't even
> help during UsrMove, the one time ever that it plausibly might have helped.
> 
> (5) Almost all %pre/%post scripts need to be eliminated.  There's no
> reason that RPM can't detect when a shared library is being installed.
> 
> Related to this, things like users/groups/services should be written
> declaratively, not imperatively:
> 
>   %need-user kvm.kvm
>   %need-service nfsd.service
> 
> and have RPM work out how to implement it most efficiently.
> 
> (6) It should be possible to install into a chroot, and this should be
> a supported configuration.  Needed by LXC.
> 
> (7) %changelog section of RPM should be abandoned.  Instead, you
> should only have to write a changelog once (ideally in the upstream
> VCS, which is then propagated everywhere it is needed).
> 
> Developers or packagers may also need to write summary notes for each
> release, but again they should only have to be written once.
> 
> (8) Base packages like 'filesystem', 'setup' should include
> everything.  At the moment mock contains extra rules for device files
> and things like that, for no reason I can understand.  (See
> mock/backend.py '_setupDev' function).
> 
> (9) Get rid of yum's pretend "transactions".  Either implement real,
> ACID transactions where the filesystem allows it, or don't pretend.
> 
> (10) Get rid of multilib, /usr/lib64 etc and copy what Debian/Ubuntu
> are doing.
> 
> (11) Make it easier for yum to be consumed from other programs.  DNF
> fixes this.
> 
> (12) Suggests/Recommends.