Package groups: yum vs. rpm

[Matthew Miller]

On Tue, Feb 05, 2013 at 01:15:59PM -0500, Max Pyziur wrote:
> When you run the command "rpm -qi <somepackagename>"
> there is a  "Group: <somegroupname>" line.
> That group name doesn't coincide with the groups that are listed
> when running "yum groups list"
> Are these two bits of metadata related?

The Group metadata in RPM is from the dark ages. The installer in Red Hat
Linux 5 (not RHEL 5 -- the original RHL) used them to group packages
together. With RHL 6, it was recognized that keeping the grouping metadata
in the packages was unwieldy and it was better to have an external list.
That list is the 'comps' file, which is roughly what we have today and where
yum gets its group info (although the file format has changed several times
over the years).

This is from memory; I may have the versions slightly off. But it was at
least that long ago.

-- 
Matthew Miller  ☁☁☁  Fedora Cloud Architect  ☁☁☁  <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>