seth vidal wrote: >>I have a way to textually specify system installation. Part of it lists >>all the packages installed on the system. The idea is that an any given >>time the textual representation if valid. Now, suppose a use edits this >>representation and adds one more package to the list. If I am to take >>this new representation and install a machine based on it, I would have >>no guarantee that it will be stable, because the user might not have >>specified all the dependent packages. To prevent this problem, I would >>like to provide an interface to the user to modify this textual >>representation. When user tell the system that he wants to add one >>package, the system might end up adding more to the list (textual >>representation of the system configuration) after all the dependencies >>are resolved. >> >>Since yum already does dependency resolution I would like to use it. >>Ideally, once the user specified the package he wants to add, >>internally, I run "yum -C get_dependency_set <user_package>" and yum >>returns, say: >>" >><user_package> >><package1_that_user_package_also_needs> >><some_other_required_package> >>" >> >>I would like to run yum from cache, to make it a little faster. The >>"get_dependency_set" is, obviously, not implemented yet. >> >>What is the best way to achieve this? If the community thinks that this >>is a worthwhile flag to have, I would write the glue code necessary to >>get this flag call yum's internal functions (once I figure out where >>these functions are). >> >>Once other way would be to run "yum install <package> and just parse >>yum's output, since it has package information when it asks confirmation >>questions. But his seems like a bad way. >> >> > >I'd like for people to be able to use yum this way too. I have been and >am still working on the abstraction of dependency resolution via yum so >it is more suitably used as a library/module. Right now a lot of it is >tied up in the metadata format and letting it help you with resolving >deps but overall it's pretty straightforward. > >Right now with yum 2.0.X I'd say achieving it would be fairly difficult. >The depresolver is too entangled with other things in yum that it would >be harder to pull out. If you're not pressed for time right away - wait >a little bit longer and let me see if I can help make this more trivial >to implement. > >Thanks >-sv > > > > > Thanks Seth. I need this functionality fairly soon, so I would like to ask for your opinions on the following questions. While I am waiting for yum v3, what can be done in the meantime. 1) What do you think of parsing yum's output as a temporary alternative? 2) Are there other tools that may do that? 3) What is the timeline for this feature to become available? and 4) Since I seems to be the only one that needs it right now, what can I do to make this happen faster? Thanks. -Sergei
