Install RPMs


News

March, 2003 : stop developments
I will no more work on this project. The main reason is because I've switch to Debian. For my point of view the RPM packages are not regorously build, too many failed dependency, ... If someone is interessted to continue this project, you can mail me.

October 10th, 2002 : Release of IRPM-0.8.1.
This version comes with shell scripts and bug fixing concerning RPM-4.1.

October 8th, 2002 : First release of the web pages for IRPM.


Overview

IRPM is a Python program that help you to install RPMS.  
If, like me, you don't like to see "RPM Pollution" on your disk, IRPM is a tool for you.
After installing a minimalist (RPM based) distribution, IRPM find for you all the dependencies for a new RPM installation.
More, IRPM have a very strong "search" functionnality allowing you to look for information into RPMs before installing them.

I know that other tools exist to facilitate the RPM installation, but none are in Python.  One of the best is urpmi (from Mandrake), but it's written in Perl (quite rigid header DB, no search capabilities (AFAIK)).  
But lot of them deal with RPM installation via Internet, not via the CDROM (or local filesystem)

So I've decided to write my own RPM tool in Python.

Features

In fact IRPM is a set of 3 programs :
- irpm : to query RPMs (installed or not yet installed)
             to make dependency analyzis
             to search keywords into RPMs (installed or not yet installed)
             to install RPMs
- gen_hdrs : to generate headers from RPMs.  An header contains only the meta date of a RPM file.
             You have the possibility to compress those header files.     This takes less space, but more CPU
- dump_pkg : to dump the meta data from a RPM or from a header.

TODO

- increase tests on each Distro
- write documentation (HTML doc, man pages, INSTALL guide, ...)
- write a "setup" procedure to facilitate the installation
- add a remove functionality
- ...

Dowloads

October 10th, 2002 The current version is IRPM-0.8.1.


The older version are still available.

WARNING : irpm was build on top of RPM-4.0.4.  On the Brand new RedHat 8.0, you must first install librpm404 and rpm404-python.

Documentation

Must yet to be done.
Up to now some documentation is written into de coding.  

Minimal instrustions to run IRPM

Waiting a better documentation, here after the steps needed to play with IRPM.

1) adapt the irpm.conf file to your needs, and save it to /etc/irpm/irpm.conf (or use the -c option)

2) Adapt the irpm_shell_params file to fit your needs.
    Adapt your PATH environement variable (f.e. : export PATH=/root/irpm:$PATH)
3) run gen_hdrs for each CDROM (or each RPMs sites).  This will create all the header files.
          f.e. : gen_hdrs CD1 CD2 CD3
4) That's it. You can play with IRPM.  Just type irpm --help for you information.


Mailing-list

A mailing list is available here.

Forums

Forums are available here.

Developpers

A CVS has been set-up.
You can browse the sources here.
But you can also download the last version.

Screenshots

This is a command line program.