mharris-elrepo - My Enterprise Linux 5 Yum repository

This is my personal yum repository for Enterprise Linux 5, which may be used with either Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, or CentOS 5. It is a small collection of rpm packages that I build for my own purposes, either because they are not present in EL or one of the other repositories that I use, or because I have some other administrative, developmental, or academic reason for packaging and maintaining them for myself. By popular request for my custom built packages from a handful of people mainly on IRC, I have made my private personal repository available for limited use to a wider audience, however it should not be considered to be a mainstream public addon repository, but rather a publically shared personal repository with decent quality rpms.

The packages are mostly backported to EL from the current Fedora release at any given point in time, and modified as necessary to get them to build as cleanly as possible with as many features as the Fedora build has so long as it can be done with minimal dependency hassles. The packages should conform rather closely to Fedora Packaging Guidelines, and I will do everything I can possibly do to avoid any of my packages replacing core OS vendor supplied packages that are dependencies of my main applications. The exception to this rule of course is the applications themselves (currently: firefox, xulrunner wine, pidgin).

Updates: I do not monitor the upstream projects on a daily basis, but when I catch wind that a new release is out, when I have the time to do so, I will update the packages unless I'm aware of any major problems with the new version.

Security Erratum: When possible and as time permits, I will update packages to fix security vulnerabilities that I'm aware of, so long as a patch or a new version exists that fixes the problem. From time to time I may fix bugs in the packages myself, but it is not my priority to do so. If I haven't released an update for an issue and anyone is anxious for one, feel free to send me patches for consideration.

Currently, it is a single repository, but I am considering splitting out certain packages into their own "channels", so people can get just the packages they are interested in, without worrying about any of my other builds updating or conflicting with packages from other repos they use. Nobody has asked for this, but I figured it would be useful to people so I will probably do it at some point. I have no timeframe in mind for that so please don't ask.

Warning: This is all very adhoc right now so don't expect enterprise level quality assurance, technical support, bug tracking, or other services.

Bug reports: If you encounter a bug or glitch that is related specifically to the rpm packaging or the manner in which the package was built, you can contact me in IRC on freenode, in the #centos-social channel. Do not ask for help with my packages in the #centos channel as it will be considered off topic by the admins in there and you'll be redirected to #centos-social. For the time being, I am not expecting too many people to use my packages, and so I will permit people to send me bug/glitch reports directly related to the rpm packaging or installation of my packages via email at mharris@mharris.ca however please do NOT write me asking me for technical support or about general purpose bugs in any of the software as I don't have the time or resources to deal with a large volume of personal emails of that nature. This is all very informal and small scale, so please don't inundate me. ;o)

This repository is intended specifically for me. I expect anyone else who wants to use it to have enough experience with using yum and rpm at the command line, and a good familiarity with the various commandline options those utilities provide, and to be able to read the manuals for those programs, or use Google to search for answers to any yum or rpm related problems or errors they may encounter. Do not email me asking for detailed help on how to use yum or rpm as this repository is not intended for people who need that level of assistance and I will ignore those type of emails.

Installing the repository configuration

Once installed, the repository is disabled by default. You must either invoke yum and other tools with the "--enablerepo=mharris-el" option, or manually edit the yum repository configuration to enable the repo by default.

• Install the repo file: rpm -ivh mharris.ca/pub/el/mharris-el-repo-release.noarch.rpm
• Use yum/yumdownloader/repoquery or whatever other tools you prefer to use query the repository, install packages, update them, search for them, etc. Read the documentation for these commands if you are not familiar with how to do that.

Navigating the repository mirrors

At this time there are only a primary and secondary mirror which should be sufficient for now. The primary site is http://mharris.ca/pub/el which is not directory navigatable, and the secondary site http://www.linux.org.uk/~mharris/pub/el, which is navigatable. You can peruse the packages available at the secondary mirror if you wish.

At the time being (November 12, 2009), the repository contains builds of the following packages: firefox-3.5, xulrunner, mozilla-filesystem, wine, ktorrent, pidgin, pidgin-otr, pidgin-facebook, java-1.6.0-openjdk (with the browser plugin that does not come with the official RHEL version).
The package list may change with new package additions, package removals, etc. at any given time without notice. I do not currently send out any form of notifications for new package releases, nor advisories or anything of the sort because this is a small personal one man show, not a big project. Over time I will likely improve and streamline things to make it easier for myself to manage, and will likely make it less enigmatic for people based on feedback and how much time I have to spend on it.

Having said all that, I hope that people find my packages useful and constructive feedback is appreciated. I'm currently testing out Google Wave, and have set up a wave for feedback/questions/etc., and welcome other Wave users to join the wave and give feedback:
Mike A. Harris EL yum repo Wave
Enjoy the packages.