Features/ReworkPackageGroups

Rework Package Groups

Summary

Reorganize how the distribution is constructed.

Owner

• Name: Bill Nottingham
• Email: notting@redhat.com

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora 18
• Last updated: 2012-02-14
• Percentage of completion: 0%

Detailed Description

Currently, we use a single set of package metadata (the comps file) for both distribution construction and package categorization. This is inefficient, confusing, and leads to bad user interfaces.

Benefit to Fedora

Our various spins and releases are more cleanly and easily defined, and package selection interfaces are simplified. Users who install Fedora 18 and later upgrade will automatically get group changes for the groups that they have installed.

Scope

• All optional packages are removed from the comps file
• Groups are reorganized as needed to better define distribution building blocks
• spin-kickstarts is updated for any new group names
• Products are defined in terms of sets of groups, with optional group add-ons
• Anaconda is updated for this new product definition
• Categories of packages for post-install selection are defined through some other metadata
  • PackageKit and yum frontends are modified to support this new metadata
• yum is changed so that persistent groups are enabled by default

How To Test

• Ensure that spin-kickstarts still makes valid images
• Ensure that anaconda still allows you to select some installation package set that makes sense
• Ensure that PackageKit and yum frontends still allow package installation

User Experience

Should not be significant user interface changes outside of the general redesign of anaconda package selection.

Dependencies

• comps file
• spin-kickstarts
• anaconda
• yum
• PackageKit

Contingency Plan

None. Onward and upward!

We could back out the comps file and spin-kickstart changes, but that should not be necessary. The changes to the comps file and spin-kickstarts to allow the distribution to compose, and anaconda to install, should not be problematic.

Documentation

• None yet. We could write a guide on porting kickstart files from old group names to new group names.

Release Notes

• None

Comments and Discussion

• See Talk:Features/ReworkPackageGroups