Description of proposed enhancement: Currently, the "list" tab in pirut merely constructs a PirutPackageList object (as is used with the "search" tab). This is effective, but can result in a VERY long and unwieldy list of packages, and it can be hard to distinguish between different types, or groups, of RPMs using this list. That said, using the "browse" tab (making use of comps.xml) does *not* show all available packages - while this is perfect for less experienced users, the "list" tab seems to be more suited for a more experienced crowd, especially when the system is subscribed to 3rd-party repositories. One method around this "unmanaged" list issue is making use of RPM's built-in "groups" tag... I know that comps.xml goes a long way to effectively "replacing" this tag, but given the nature of the "list" tab (along with the description above), comps.xml is simply not adequate for all needs. Using a combination of the two would be more efficient. I therefore propose to add RPM Groups-based filtering on the "list" tab's contents, as well as adding a "description" box for the "list" tab. I manage a local mirror of several (mixed) repositories for our Fedora installations, and have opted to modify pirut to include RPM group information. (see the attached patch for pirut-1.2.8). This patch is by no means the "ultimate/final" solution, just a start. Is it possible to implement this or something similar in the upstream pirut? I'm willing to assist further if necessary ;-). As a side effect (requested by some of our users), the patch also allows enables pirut users to browse the packages while offline (using yum's cache).
Created attachment 141903 [details] patch for pirut-1.2.8: enables RPM group information, and offline browsing
The groups tag is very intentionally not used -- realistically, it's likely to stop being populated at all. Further improvements to comps are something that could be discussed (preferably on yum-devel) to make things scale more but I don't think that overloading the list view is the way to do this