I don't know why it has taken me so long, but it finally occurred to me that it would be just smashin' brilliant to use yum as a distribution mechanism for some GPL programs I have written and maintain and that are used by various groups. After all, any website (including a personal one) is a potential yum repository, and it can take the guesswork out of the entire update process for remote users. They can either mirror the mini-repository or point yum at it on their systems. One thing that I'll likely need to publish on the page directing people to the repository and new mechanism for distribution is a set of yum.conf fragments suitable for the repository with various conditions preset in them (so users don't at first have to figure out a lot about yum to use it). I expect that I can write these fragments easily enough, but I thought I'd ask first to see if anybody on the list is already doing this for a mini-repository and has good-lookin' fragments that I can just hack to redirect to my mini-repository. Ideally one would want something where e.g. I post to the program's mailing list that a new update is available that fixes the following bugs or has the following new features, where they can issue a yum update program by hand OR otherwise trigger a general update at their choice after suitable testing, and where they can easily back off to the previous revision if they install it and it blows up. This is just a bit different from the usual run of the mill usage of yum to install/maintain a whole distro on a system it seems worth asking before going ahead for any wisdom or experiences out there. rgb Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/ Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305 Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:rgb@xxxxxxxxxxxx
