Some thoughts on Redhat's package management and update procedures
follow. I didn't get any response about this on redhat-list -mailinglist,
so I thought this might be a better channel to introduce some ideas.

I have been administering Redhat boxes for over four years now.  Recently,
I have noticed more and more that there's still one important component
missing.

I'd very much like to be able to select RPM's I want to install / want to
get uninstalled by categories like in Redhat installer even without running
the installer (ie. with an RPM management util).  I believe some of
this (selecting/deselecting by Group defined in RPM, e.g.
Applications/Archiving) is done in current X utils (text interface
would be a huge plus), but still there are a couple of major functionality
features to be considered.

I'd like deselecting/selecting of RPM's by installer categories also (as
read from RedHat/base/comps) or similarly defined file.  This would be
a great help for people that realize later on that they'd really need a web
server, forgot to choose development packages in install, etc.  No need
for re-installations or manual playing with RPM's after that.

Also, along the same lines.. an extension of above. I'd very much if the
some parts of redhat installer was released as a normal userland
program.  You could do updates without booting and having to go through
your partitions and other cruft.  That'd be really neat; a little like with
FreeBSD /stand/sysinstall.  Also, creating a centralized summary (e.g.
unified diff, or anything but just mere filenames) of .rpmsave and
.rpmnew changes would be a nice addition here; e.g. compare with the
really powerful _script_ mergemaster from  FreeBSD -- Redhat could use
something like that.

Updaters like AutoRPM do some of the above, but they can't handle
situations where new packages appear / are renamed very well, not
considering the usual hassle with .rpmsave .rpmnew etc. configuration files
after such an exhaustive upgrade.

HTH :)