Mageia package repositories

I have just been finding out about the Mageia online package repositories, for the purpose of adding support in Woof.

There is a page that has a listing of all mirrors:
http://mirrors.mageia.org/

For a released version of Mageia, so far only version "1", there are three categories of packages: core, nonfree and tainted, and the RPMs are to be found in these paths on any of the mirrors:
distrib/1/i586/media/core/release/
distrib/1/i586/media/nonfree/release/
distrib/1/i586/media/tainted/release/

As well as 'i586' there is also a 'x86_64' directory.

The database information about the packages is to be found in these files:
distrib/1/i586/media/core/release/media_info/synthesis.hdlist.cz
distrib/1/i586/media/nonfree/release/media_info/synthesis.hdlist.cz
distrib/1/i586/media/tainted/release/media_info/synthesis.hdlist.cz

There are also XML files inside 'media_info', however file 'synthesis.hdlist.cz' is beautiful -- it is formatted very close to the "ppm" format we use in Woof/PPM (Puppy Package Manager). In other words, converting this file to PPM format will be a piece of cake.
Edit: well no, synthesis.hdlist.cz is quite different from the ppm format, what I meant is that it looks easy to convert.

A curious thing, Mageia have filename postfix of ".cz" for gzipped files, instead of ".gz". Why? I simply found that renaming it to 'synthesis.hdlist.gz' made gunzip happy.

Just so that other Woof hackers/developers don't overlap my efforts, this post is primary to let everyone know that I am starting today to develop support in Woof to build from Mageia packages.

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Comments

OverlayFS
Username: Dougal
Barry, seems like overlayfs might be headed for mainline: http://news.gmane.org/find-root.php?message_id=%3C1306932380-10280-1-git-send-email-miklos%40szeredi.hu%3E

synthesis.hdlist
Username: BarryK
"Here is a link with some info about the format of the synthesis.hdlist file: http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Format_of_synthesis.hdlist.cz_index

Mageia split packages
Username: BarryK
"Mandriva/Mageia like to split the original packages into lots of littler ones, like Debian/Ubuntu do. However, there are a couple of things that I don't like about how Mandriva/Mageia do it. Firstly, there doesn't seem to be any documentation that shows the original package name and identifies what it has been split into. This means that sometimes you can't be certain that you have installed all the split-packages if you want to install all of the original package. The Debian/Ubuntu online package management system does enable the original package to be readily identified, and all split-off packages identified. Secondly, Mandriva/Mageia may split an original package into many separate library split-packages, for example 'gtk+' splitting into 'libgtk', 'libgdk', etc., yet only one "dev" package is provided, for example 'libgtk-devel' which has the header files and static libs of all the split-off library packages. The problem with this is that if you accidentally leave out one of those split-off library packages, if you later want to compile some source package that needs the missing library, the 'configure' script will not complain and will use the static library. This will result in a bigger executable than it should be. Maybe I'm being too picky, but I am accustomed to superb Debian/Ubuntu package organization and management. While I'm grumbling -- Mageia is still using Hal.

Tags: woof