Discussion of Fedora Server use-cases

[Miloslav Trmač]

On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 10:13 PM, Michael R. Davis <mrdvt92 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I think the group needs to focus on making things easier for 100% RPM
> Installs.  RPM is the package manager for Fedora so applications SHOULD be
> deployable with 100% RPM-based installs and NOT require another system to
> get them running or configure them (e.g. chef, puppet, CFengine).

I don't think RPM is a good fit for doing system management:
- As the core functionality of RPM "install a file" is not a good way
to invoke an API: It's fairly resource-intensive to watch for new
files to be installed, and the semantics is problematic - now that the
file is in place, has the application parsed it correctly and is it
being actually applied, or was it ignored because of a typo?
- As a way to deploy arbitrary shell scripts, RPM is difficult to use
on all fronts: one has to write the script, wrap it in a spec file,
create the RPM, deliver the RPM, and install the RPM, just to run it;
and combine (yum history) with (rpm -q --scripts) to see what has been
run.  (ssh hostname 'the command here') with some logging would do
essentially the same thing, but much simpler.  (And, as I have argued
elsewhere in the thread, shell is long-term not a good API language in
any case.)
    Mirek