On Wed, Oct 08, 2003 at 06:40:52PM -0400, Jeremy Katz alleged: > On Tue, 2003-10-07 at 17:28, Christopher C. Weis wrote: > > 2) The ability to download, but not install, RPMs, using Yum. > > To throw my $0.02 out there for the heck of it. > > I think this is an option that has very little use. FTP clients, web > browsers, and mirroring programs all exist for a reason. I have yet to > see a convincingly good reason as to why a package updater should > replicate this functionality. > > I've heard a few reasons, and all of them seem ... questionable, at > least to me. Here's the sample of the ones I remember: > 1) "I want to evaluate the package before I install it" -- I fail to see > how having a binary package can help with that. Downloading the src.rpm > and diffing the contents, sure. But not the binary RPM. Changelogs > don't nearly have the information you want here. > 2) "I want to test it on another box first" -- Why not use yum on the > other box and download it and test it there. > 3) "I don't trust the code which installs packages" -- Then stop using > it. > 4) "Other programs that update packages have it" -- Some of them have > also corrupted rpmdbs in the past, that doesn't mean it's a good idea ;) 5) I want to install the rpm with a different root. 6) I want to grab a single file out of the rpm. 7) I want to inspect the scripts and possibly install it with --noscripts.
