misc: Let me rephrase.

Is there a way to automatically select and install rpm.livna.org rpms that enhance packages that are already installed on a FC3 box?

I assume that the answer is No.

The example of Music Player needing an mp3 plugin (i.e., the plugin “enhances” Music Player) in the current thread is an example of something desirable to “fix” by installing a rpm from rpm.livna.org. There must be plenty of other FC3 packages that are “missing something” for legal or other reasons, based on how many rpm.livna.org packages are available. You could install everything in rpm.livna.org and be covered, but that would probably not be desirable.

I’m looking at this from a systems administrator’s point of view, because I would like to do this on 8 FC3 boxes. I install updates from a local mirror and see the inclusion of the rpm.livna.org packages as a logical step, but I don’t see how to selectively do the initial installations in an automated manner.

.........

linmix: The problem is that the packages in rpm.livna.org have not been installed, so this is not a simple update. Actually, what I want to do isn’t an update or an upgrade, it’s more of an automated enhancement. Think of it as selectively merging FC3 and rpm.livna.org. And I’ll bet a lot of people would like to do this.

If I set rpm.livna.org as the only yum repository, I could presumably run “yum install -y”, but like I said above, that seems like an overkill.

You'd have to do:

yum list available

That would give you a list of available packages from which to choose the ones you'd like to install.
Unfortunaltely there are some 'enhancements' that are difficult to pinpoint, like the mp3 libraries for Rhythmbox (gstreamer ?!) which bear no resemblance to the package they are somehow associated with. I agre with you that it would be great to have some tool to be able to see whch packages would improve / enhance a system

The question is still ambigous. Only in the bottom of your message you expand on it, fortunately. Thanks for that.

There are two types of packages hosted at rpm.livna.org: 1) add-ons, i.e. plugin packages and extra packages, and 2) replacement update packages.

Type 1 packages are either named like xmms-mp3, k3b-mp3, gstreamer-plugins-mp3, kdemultimedia-extras, which are not provided in Fedora Core or Fedora Extras and where the first part of the package name is the base package name in Fedora Core or Fedora Extras. They only add plugins or extra files which cannot be included in Fedora. Similarly to Fedora Extras, these packages don't upgrade or replace packages from Fedora Core. Also of type 1 are extra packages for software which cannot be included in Fedora Extras due to patenting or licencing issues, e.g. a game called Tetris or closely resembling Tetris could not be included in Fedora Extras.

Type 2 packages have the same name of a package in Fedora Core or Fedora Extras, but an increase package release version. Where no plugin technology is implemented, this is the only way to enhance Fedora Core/Extras packages with missing features. It is generally tried to avoid replacing Fedora Core packages, and if a package is included, it is not a major version upgrade, but attempts at staying in sync with Fedora Core except for the extra features like mp3.

Fedora Extras on the contrary consists of pure add-ons and extra packages. None of the packages in Fedora Extras replace or upgrade Fedora Core.

Right. You install only those packages you really want and stay up-to-date with yum in case rpm.livna.org releases updates for these packages. E.g. the plugin packages require their core packages to be installed, so if you installed all of rpm.livna.org, that would pull in a lot of packages from Core and Extras as dependencies. Example: if your favourite music player is XMMS, you would get just xmms-mp3 and don't care much about kdemultimedia-extras and gstreamer-plugins-mp3 and the bmp-mp3 package which will appear as an add-on for bmp in Extras. You would not like any extra package from rpm.livna.org to be installed either, e.g. games or tools.

When you find something complicated, you must be prepared to propose a solution. The easiest way is to collect wanted package names in a shell script which calls yum to install these packages all at once.

Creation of meta packages, let's say a package called "mp3-support", would not make sense, since it's too generic.

Which is not possible anyway, since most packages in rpm.livna.org require packages from Fedora Core and Fedora Extras, so you need to enable those two in your repository configuration, too. Otherwise it would break dependencies and make yum fail.

Right. This is another crucial point. Preferrably, an FAQ document would explain this, so the user need not know that GStreamer is the multimedia backend for Rhythmbox and other media players.

linmix and misc: Thanks for the excellent feedback.

I’m sure lots of other readers of this thread will benefit from your remarks. They would make a great addition to the rpm.livna.org FAQs.