On Tue, 30 Sep 2003, Dan Young wrote:
What relation (if any) does /usr/share/doc/rpm-<version>/GROUPS
have
here? Is this maintained seperately, being part of the rpm package
instead of comps?
The GROUPS file provides a (not terribly well-defined) set of
broad categories for packages. A GROUP tends to define what a package
does (it's a library, daemon, application, documentation), though in
some cases it defines a relationship (it's part of the Base system).
The comps.xml file provides package groupings for installation tools.
The comps file combines packages of differing GROUPS into a useful
installation category. For example, the Red Hat 9 "Printing Support"
comps group includes packages from all sorts of GROUPS:
4Suite: Development/Libraries
a2ps: Applications/Publishing
cups: System Environment/Daemons
enscript: Applications/Publishing
ghostscript: Applications/Publishing
hpijs: Applications/Publishing
ttfprint: System Environment/Base
redhat-config-printer: System Environment/Daemons
...
The newer comps.xml mechanism also has a way to specify
installation-time dependencies.
--Paul Heinlein <heinlein(a)madboa.com>