This is an update on the ability for the EPEL project to provide accurate package metadata to our contributors and users. The basic idea is to have a place to look to find out names of packages, what they provide, require, conflict with, etc, and maybe even have it searchable. This seems like an easy task at first. When I started looking into it, I thought I would do something with RHN+EPEL. However certain restrictions with my account from $DAYJOB have prevented that.

Next, I thought I could just use the repodata off of Centos media. Sure, it's not quite the same as RHEL, or the other EL's, but it's probably what most contributors are using for testing (and mock uses it also). I worked with that for a while and wrote a nice little app that spit out the package, provides, requires and such. Then, I wanted to add EPEL, and my repodata-fu was not good enough. Additionally, I wasn't really sure I wanted to maintain another metadata application (I'm more ruby than python, so that's why I didn't start with repoview). Also, the targets are moving. So, if today I have EL5.1 + EPEL, next month the repodata of both sides have changed, and it needs to be kept updated. Then, the project will require EL5.1 +EPEL-testing + EPEL-stable, for people looking to contribute new packages and such. Basically, I am at a loss of how to really tackle this again. I thought I had a good handle on it, and obviously don't.

My idea now is to mirror CentOS and EPEL and throw them into one directory, run createrepo to get an SQLite DB made, then run repoview and have that for EL5.1+EPEL+EPEL-testing. (Same thing for 4). If anybody has any better ideas, I would love to hear them.

stahnma