(copying [EMAIL PROTECTED], which will track the progress of merging RPM package support)
On Tue, Aug 26, 2003 at 05:06:46PM -0300, Gustavo Niemeyer wrote: > > I don't need every change in small chunks, but it would help a great > > deal if you could assist me in separating the RPM support from the other > > enhancements (such as lua scripting, SWIG, etc.). I've pulled down the > > complete diff, but there are a large number of unrelated changes and it > > this makes it difficult to follow. > > It'll be a pleasure to help you in that task. Can you please explain > better what code you're classifying as "RPM support" inside the apt-pkg > directory? Code inside this directory should be completely unrelated to > RPM itself. This code is in apt-pkg/rpm/ There are a number of changes in apt-pkg/ itself (not apt-pkg/rpm) which certainly seem to be related to RPM support. For example, DepCache::CheckDep seems to be mostly replaced, and I presume that the two versions are not interchangeable. There is a comment about RPM needing to check the dependency type in order to determine if it is satisfied. Also, pkgCache::FindPkg is changed to be case-sensitive. These are the kinds of things that I would like to merge in a cleaner way, but in some cases the intent is not clear to me. For FindPkg, it seems logical to add a method to the pkgSystem or pkgVersioningSystem to perform package name comparison in a system-dependent way. > Yes. I've looked at this before trying with SWIG. It was quite limited > at the time I've looked, perhaps this has changed? It is still rather limited, but it provides a somewhat more natural Python API rather than directly translating the C++ API. If there are things missing that you need, I think I would rather add them to python-apt than use swig. I actually tried the same thing back in 2001, and that seemed to be the opinion then: http://lists.debian.org/deity/2001/deity-200108/msg00030.html > > I'd like to start with the rpm pkgsystem, along with whatever supporting > > code changes it needs in order to not require any #ifdefs in order to > > work. Then we can tackle the rest. > > I think you should go in the oposide direction. Port every interesting > feature from the main trunk, and the rpm support will already be there. > As far as I know, there's nothing in the current trunk of apt-rpm which > couldn't be used as an improvement in the upstream apt. I do not think this is feasible for several reasons. First, there seem to be places where deb support has been broken in common code. These cases need to be resolved in a way that allows both rpm and deb to work correctly. Also, you have implemented a lot of changes, and I am not familiar with your code, so I would be introducing a lot of instability into Debian's apt, which I do not think is wise. I would rather merge a piece at a time and get everything working well for both of us. > > Colin Walters and Isaac Jones have implemented repository authentication > > (http://monk.debian.net/apt-secure/), which it seems you have as well. > > I'd like to merge a unified system for this. > > This would be nice. Are you able to explain how different it is from our > system, and what features you miss? I'd like to be part of the merging > process, as we have a good deal of real world experience on this specific > area. I have not done a direct comparison of the two; the URL I gave above provides a high-level description of how apt-secure works. http://bugs.debian.org/203741 contains discussion on the progress of merging this work. -- - mdz
