technical solution/workaround for EPEL vs. RH sub channel

[BJ Dierkes]

On Jan 18, 2010, at 1:59 PM, Christopher wrote:

> Hello...
> 
>  What about the following idea as a solution to RH vs. EPEL conflicting
> packages?  Extend yum either in the core code or as a plugin to allow
> exclude=@group.  Then the EPEL repo could contain groups
> @rh-sub-channel-foo, etc. with EPEL packages that conflict.  That would
> allow the sysadmin to selectively exclude packages for RH sub projects
> they get via RHN.  Even if there are technical problems with RHEL4 or
> RHEL5, this approach could still work with RHEL6.  

Personally, I would not recommend making any major changes to existing setup (EL4/5) and would look at making the changes for EL6.  Depending on the impact of the changes of course.

> The epel.repo file could contain something like:
> 
> # repo file for epel
> # If you wish to avoid conflicting with a RedHat channel you subscribe
> # to, you can use exclude="@rh-group-foo".
> # get get the list of groups group run
> # yum grouplist --disablerepo='*' --enablerepo=epel 
> # or see http://some.url/EPEL
> #
> # warning subscribing to RH sub channels and EPEL without checking for
> # package conflicts may kill kittens.
> 
> [epel]
> name=Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 5 - $basearch
> #baseurl=http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/5/$basearch
> mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=epel-5&arch=
> $basearch
> failovermethod=priority
> enabled=1
> gpgcheck=1
> gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL
> 
> # exclude="@rh-group foo"

Forgive me if I'm missing something, so let me summarize what I think you are referring to:

RHN [Sub] Channel contains packageA, packageB, etc.
EPEL @sub-channel group also contains packageA, packageB, etc (or packages that conflict with them)


The gaol being to allow EPEL to offer packages that conflict with packages provided by RHEL.  Where I am not following is the exclude.  Wouldn't 'exclude=@rh-group' in the epel.repo config file exclude the @rh-group in EPEL, rather than excluding the @rh-group in RHN?

Additionally, something I'm unsure of is.... with the rhn plugin for yum, there are no 'per repo' [read channel] repo configs, therefore to exclude anything from RHN you have to globally exclude in yum.conf (meaning you would exclude the @group from all repos/channels).  So if a sysadmin wants to exclude @group from RHN it would have to be a global exclude (or are you assuming that they wouldn't be subscribed to the sub-channel in RHN).

As I said, forgive me if I"m missing something.

---
derks