Managing Internal Yum Repository Groups

Question

What is the best method for handling yum groups dependencies?

For example, take this comps.xml file

<comps>
  <group>
    <id>production</id>
    <name>Production</name>
    <default>true</default>
    <description>Packages required to run</description>
    <uservisible>true</uservisible>
    <packagelist>
      <packagereq type="default">ssh</packagereq>
    </packagelist>
  </group>
  <group>
    <id>development</id>
    <name>Development</name>
    <default>false</default>
    <description>Packages required to develop</description>
    <uservisible>true</uservisible>
    <packagelist>
      <packagereq type="default">gcc</packagereq>
    </packagelist>
  </group>
</comps>

which is packaged with createrepo -g comps.xml x86_64. The ssh and gcc rpms are not installed in the x86_64 directory.

If I run yum groupinstall development, yum is smart enough to pull the gcc package from the RHEL repo even though the groups are defined in my internal repository. However, is this the proper way of doing this, or should I copy the rpms to my local repository and recreate the repo?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 29 '11 at 06:15

You've got it right.

Yum does cross-repository dependency resolution, so it's actually desirable to have a setup like you describe. Normally you'd have the base os, updates, and a local repo all enabled; you definitely want to be able to, say, add a non-standard package in your local repo and have yum pull dependent packages from the base + updates so your new package's requirements are satisfied.

Managing Internal Yum Repository Groups

1 Answers1