Rework Package Groups
Summary
Reorganize how the distribution is constructed and presented in anaconda to install.
Owner
- Name: Bill Nottingham
- Email: notting@redhat.com
Current status
- Targeted release: Fedora 18
- Last updated: 2012-08-01
- Percentage of completion: 100%
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
- New metadata is added to comps to describe installable entities + their options - DONE
- New groups are added in comps that define these - DONE
- yum is changed so that persistent groups are enabled by default -- DONE
- Support is added to yum and anaconda for reading this data and presenting it in the user interface - DONE
- spin-kickstarts is updated for any new group names
- (optional) Categories of packages for post-install selection are defined through some other metadata
- (optional) PackageKit and yum frontends are modified to support this new metadata
- (optional) All optional packages are removed form the comps file
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