Bug 1265475

Summary:	[rfe] Implement a plugin for matching packages across distros to host distro
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Neal Gompa <ngompa13>
Component:	dnf-plugins-extras	Assignee:	rpm-software-management
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	rawhide	CC:	jkadlcik, jzeleny, packaging-team-maint, tim.lauridsen, vmukhame
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	FutureFeature, Triaged
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2023-08-10 07:03:45 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Neal Gompa 2015-09-23 03:28:52 UTC

Description of problem:
An unfortunate reality of the current landscape is that a lot of Linux applications are given with instructions for pulling dependencies or whatnot to build it in the form of apt instructions for Debian packages. Some even offer it in more esoteric distributions, which makes things tricky.

Suggested solution:
There's a such thing as AppStream distromatch[1], which intends to provide a mechanism to remap packages from any distribution to the host distribution's equivalent. A DNF plugin that utilizes this data to allow people to query and install packages using the names of other distribution packages would greatly simplify things. It doesn't make it perfect, but it would be better than now (which is manually searching for everything).

For example: "dnf distromatch --distro=ubuntu install libbz2-dev" should trigger an install of "bzip2-devel", which is our equivalent to that package. Likewise, if someone does "dnf distromatch --distro=mageia install lib64openssl1.0.0" should install "openssl-libs" on Fedora. It may also make sense to include support for the full suite of common actions through it (remove, search, etc.).

[1]: https://gitlab.com/appstream/distromatch


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
dnf-1.1.2, dnf-plugins-core-0.1.12, dnf-plugins-extras-0.0.9

Comment 1 Michal Luscon 2015-09-30 09:11:57 UTC

It sounds like very useful plugin.

Comment 2 Fedora End Of Life 2016-07-19 20:14:11 UTC

Fedora 22 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2016-07-19. Fedora 22 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. If you
are unable to reopen this bug, please file a new report against the
current release. If you experience problems, please add a comment to this
bug.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.

Comment 3 Neal Gompa 2017-10-14 10:56:32 UTC

Reopened and restored state as this was a feature request...

Comment 4 Jaroslav Mracek 2023-08-10 07:03:45 UTC

The request looks reasonable, but the price will be to high. I am not talking about requirements for development. I am talking about required additional metadata handling. I think that a better approach is to have a web service that will provide the functionality rather than a local tool for one distribution. Such a solution could be more generic therefore it might have larger community. The referenced project ('[1]: https://gitlab.com/appstream/distromatch') is not updated anymore, therefore it creates another complication. I am closing the bug report because I don't think we will implement it.