Re: [gentoo-dev] Multiple Repo Support

[Ciaran McCreesh]

On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 00:19:41 +0900 Jason Stubbs <jstubbs@g.o>
wrote:
| > DEPEND=">=foo-bar/baz-2.1::ciaranmssekritrepo"
| >
| > which would add a restriction that only packages in
| > ciaranmssekritrepo would be considered. This only works if the
| > repository knows its own identifier, however...
| 
| I don't see the need for this. Resolution will the same repository to
| satisfy a package's dependencies where possible. If you just want to
| be able to state that a package from one repository needs packages
| from a different repository, wouldn't something like
| REPO_URI="mirror://gentoo/repo" suffice just as well without making a
| mess of the atom syntax?

Yick. Consider the following use case (picking Vim because I know the
package and can think of an easy, clear example):

Fred builds a repository containing some Vim plugins that aren't in the
main tree. Fred lets other people use this repository. Then, Fred tries
to make an ebuild that needs Vim built with tclinterp enabled. Problem!
The Gentoo ebuilds don't turn on (even via USE) tclinterp. So, Fred
creates his own Vim ebuilds that do support tclinterp. Now he needs
some way to DEPEND upon "my Vim ebuilds, not the Gentoo ones".

Now consider the following use case for why "if a package is already
installed, try to restrict future installs to packages from that
repository" is less than ideal:

A collection of bleeding edge users creates a repository containing
updated ebuilds for unstable Gnome 2.30_alpha releases. Various people
use this repository. Then, the official Gentoo ebuilds for Gnome 2.30
stable are released, and the bleeding edge users don't update their
repository. Users who were previously using the 2.30_alpha ebuilds will
be stuck with them.

So, default behaviour should be "pick from any repository", but it
should be as easy as reasonably possible for both ebuilds and users to
specify a repository restriction where necessary or desired.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (I can kill you with my brain)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm