Re: [Ltib] LTIB: distribute prebuilt host RPM packages (rpm-fs, git, distcc, ...)

[Gernot Hillier]

Hi!

Am 14.05.2010 16:37, schrieb Stuart Hughes:
>> Therefore I'm seeking for a mechanism to provide an additional dir where
>> ltib looks for binary RPMS before rebuilding them - exactly like %ldirs
>> provides a means to add an additional LPP dir.
>>
> 
> For the host packages this is not easily doable as describe before.

Sorry, but I still don't get it. :-(

Why couldn't LTIB check for the binary RPM for "rpm-fs" and then for the
others in an additional path defined by .ltibrc (which would be
writeable for a normal user) and install those instead of recompiling
them? Just like it is done for %ldirs before downloading stuff from the GPP.

There's surely a mentionable risk that they might not work on each and
any Linux distribution - however, I'd bet that those basic tools don't
have too much external dependencies and should run on most recent
Fedoras, SUSEs, Ubuntus or friends if the versions aren't years away.

> So if you know all your hosts are running the same distro, you could
> come up with a scheme that saves off all the binary rpms and then later
> you could somehow install these using your script.

Yeah, that's exactly what I want. Just that I'd love to see a way to
place them somewhere else besides /opt/ - some place a normal user would
have access to.

> The real battle you're fighting again is the chicken/egg and security
> issues of bootstrapping a known environment that can run on and
> distribution.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not arguing about general distribution of
prebuilt RPMs as part of LTIB. This should be done for each distribution
which would mean a lot of work for sure. It's just about a feature which
could be rather usable in "controlled" environments like project teams
where people tend to work in comparable environments.

And LTIB itself seems to be the only place where this could be
implemented taken I don't want to have my script run with sudo rights.

> My suggestion would be it's not worth doing this.  If you're using VMs,
> why not just clone those at a known working starting point.

Sure, there would be other solutions. It's just about an additional
feature for speeding up things in enterprise use. Something we could
probably implement if you would agree that it makes sense... :)

-- 
Gernot

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