Troy Dawson wrote:
>> This brings up a thought that I was having. 1 - Switch from having
>> a yum-conf rpm to having the default yum repositories in
>> sl-release, like the rest of the world.

Actually I like having the default repos in the yum-conf rpm, because I 
exclude it from the repo and use my own version with site 
customisations. But I could just have my own version of sl-release I 
suppose. Perhaps the Fedora spins stuff will superceded this.

Jon Peatfield wrote:
> While you are looking at the yum rempos etc can I suggest having 
> baseurls containing .../$releasever/... rather than having to have the 
> repo files updates for each point release?

I agree; strongly, if it makes a diff.

> Currently we replace the shipped yum.repos.d/ files with ones which uses 
> $releasever which means we need to have a few symlinks so that 5.4 -> 
> 54, 5.5 -> 55 etc but other than that saves us from all sorts of mess :-)

We do the same (see http://mirror.triumf.ca/SL)

Troy:
>> ... have *all* non-sl yum repositories in their own rpm.

Jon:
> I strongly agree!

Me too

Troy:
>> 3 - Have the yum priorities plugin installed by default,

Agreed

>> and all yum  repositories need to have a priority ranking.

Yes.  This is already the case isn't it?

Jon:
> I've not looked at yum priorities, but I assume that you can temporarily 
> alter the order/priorities to pull in a version from a low-priority repo...

You can do:

   yum --disableplugin=priorities install <package>

or:

  yum --disablerepo=\* --enablerepo=<low-priority-repo> install <package>

Of course the second fails if <package> has dependencies in [base] etc.

When I know I want <package> from <low-priority-repo>, I run the second 
command to see what dependencies it pulls in from  <low-priority-repo>. 
Then I edit the .repo file putting "priority=5" (making it a high 
priority repo) but add

    includepkgs=package,package-*,dependency,dependency-*

So I get the updates to <package> and <dependency> without messing up 
anything else.

-- Kel