apt-rpm roadmap

[Panu Matilainen]

On Wed, 2006-04-26 at 18:40 +0200, Dag Wieers wrote:
> 
> Here's my current wishlist :)
> 
>  + Easier pinning support (more simple syntax with added functionality)

Saner pinning (syntax) would indeed be welcome. Any specifics about
added functionality, other than pinning by signature?

>  + Mapping between signature(s) and repositories and pinning based on signature

Mapping between signatures and repos was is in my plans, just wasn't
explicitly listed. Pinning on signature shouldn't be too hard once the
signature handling is otherwise integrated.

>  + Like smart the option to update when doing upgrade or install
>    eg. apt-get --update upgrade

A quick and dirty version of this is about ten lines of code, it'll just
read the cache twice. Should be pretty trivial to do properly as well,
just need to shuffle code around a bit in apt-get and apt-shell.

>  + Delaying dropping older rpm releases as late as possible :)
> 
> apt is currently the only solution that stretches (almost) from EL2.1 
> (+- RH7.2) to FC5. Smart and Yum fall short. Even on EL3 Smart doesn't 
> work and Yum is different (different options and functionality).

Yup. That's a pretty strong "selling point" for apt in some environments
and would be kinda sad to loose it. Newer libxml2 can be installed
alongside old one if necessary and I'd certainly accept patches to make
repomd (and thus libxml2) optional. It was in fact my original intention
to make it optional, just haven't gotten around to do it.

Anyway, I'm not in any particular hurry wrt removing support for old rpm
versions. It might well be possible to sanitize the rpm code so the old
stuff wouldn't get so much in the way - we'll see. 

> 
> And EL3 will be around a long time still.

EL3 is likely to be covered even if support for ancient rpm is dropped,
the "new" rpmlib API was introduced in rpm-4.1 and has remained
reasonably similar up to 4.4.x. So EL3 with it's rpm-4.2.1 is in the
range of easily supportable versions.

> 
> Thanks a lot for continuing development !
> 
> PS Somehow it made a big difference to the Debian colleagues that the 
> systems were 'managed' by Apt :)

That's another selling point of apt, in some environments :)

P.S. Your wishlist added to the roadmap, I'll be putting the list up on
the website shortly once I've collected all the items there.

	- Panu -