[repo-coord] Repo information inside rpm?

[Morten Kjeldgaard]

I am sitting here thinking it would be extremely useful to have some repo 
information stored in the RPM header. I have my eyes on the Distribution 
tag, which I think is somewhat useless, and could be put to much better 
use if we decide on some kind of standard. I propose something like this:

Distribution: *<repo>:<distribution>:<release>:<lang>:<arch>:<component>*

Let me illustrate my proposal with a few examples:

Distribution: *http://apt.sw.be:redhat:fc1:en:i386:dag*
Distribution: *http://ayo.freshrpms.net:fedora/linux:1::i386:freshrpms* 
Distribution: *http://apt.physik.fu-berlin.de:fedora:1:en:i386:at-stable*
Distribution: *http://apt.imsb.au.dk:fedora:1::i386:xray*

This would make it easy to extract and parse the distribution tag from a 
program or a script. The '*' around the string is to signal that it 
adheres to the standard. The fields are separated by ':' which is pretty 
standard and easy to parse. You will notice that the string could be 
easily rewritten into an apt sources.list format file. And a script would 
be able to take an arbitrary RPM file (from a build directory, say) and 
shove it into the right place in the filesystem.

I plan to implement a scheme like this in my repo, but I would like to 
hear what people have to say, and if possible, come to some kind of 
agreement!

Cheers,
Morten

-- 
Morten Kjeldgaard, Asc. professor, Ph.D.
Department of Molecular Biology, Aarhus University
Gustav Wieds Vej 10 C, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
Lab +45 89425026 * Mobile +45 89428063 * Fax +45 86123178
Home +45 86188180 * ICQ 27224900 * http://imsb.au.dk/~mok