A proposal for review and discussion: In the same way that TW is released in snapshots the repo itself would benefit from being presented by snapshot. Currently, if one wants to install a new package or perhaps *-debuginfo packages problems can occur especially on TW (and I have run into these both personally and with folks I support). A new package brings in a bunch of new dependencies that are compiled against newer versions of already installed dependencies and one ends up with an unusable package or worse. Alternatively, dependency checks may only be resolvable with a full system update anyway. The end result is that a TW install can be unmodifiable in a short period of time without updating to a newer snapshot first. This is compounded when rolling back via snapper due to an issue that the user is waiting to be resolved. By providing separate repos per TW snapshot these issues can be alleviated since new package installs will have been built using the same deps and build environment the user is currently running. The separate repos could be easily handled with either a modification to zypper or a wrapper, but having it built into zypper would seem preferable. When the user wants to perform the equivalent of `zypper ref && zypper dup` the following would occur: - zypper replaces any snapshotted repos with the newest version (or a specific one) - zypper ref - zypper dup The first step is the only part that could use some helper functions and could be implemented in a variety of manors. Publishing a text file containing the latest/current snapshot in each repo should make it easy for zypper to know what is the latest, completed snapshot. The repos could also be prefixed at a variety of levels. Just to provide an example: http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/oss/ could become: http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/20161013/repo/oss/ depending on the level at which it is implemented on the repo side. Since everything else remains the same the amount of work required should be rather minimal. On the storage side, either entire copies could be used for simplicity or a symlink structure setup where unchanged packages are symlinked to previous snapshot and only the changed packages are present as a non-symlink. Given there is concern for mirror requirements the symlink approach will most likely be preferred. Snapshot repos could be kept for some predefined length of time and then discarded. This would automatically work with snapper since the repo URLs would be stored in zypp configuration and thus captured by btrfs snapshots. Additionally, non-btrfs filesystems could still benefit from being able to rollback by switching to older TW snapshot repos or remain on their current snapshot when they are aware of an issue in newer TW snapshots that affects them. Devel project on OBS or third-party repositories using OBS should be able to utilize the same mechanism for providing snapshotted repos if desired. I would imagine a new parameter in the .repo file or similar to explicitly indicate that the repo is snapshotted rather than attempting to detect based on URL. Additionally, providing snapshots could resolve the issue of not being able to tell when a snapshot is ready to be downloaded. Currently, there is a delay between the time a snapshot is released and has been replicated to the mirrors. As such one can update in the middle of this process with varying results. Obviously, Factory has a snapshot point already defined, but doing so for third-party or devel project may be a bit more tricky. It would be rather nice to have zypper be able to quickly tell if all repos are updated for the latest snapshot rather than having the manually try and assess the situation. Probably the simplest and most consistent approach would be to snapshot devel repos building against openSUSE:Factory/snapshot at the same point the snapshot was created (or perhaps released). If packages fail to build against the new snapshot they can be updated and will be included with the next TW snapshot. Building against openSUSE:Factory will provide early warning. Tying devel project to Factory/snapshot is probably the only reasonable approach since otherwise each repo will have its own snapshot point/process and it will become rather complex. If a package breaks on a new snapshot it probably makes sense to not publish the old version, in the new snapshot repo, that way users should see a vendor change. Blocking the whole project from publishing could be a configuration option as well, but probably more than required. Since devel/third-party projects should build against openSUSE:Factory/ snapshot they have to start after Factory is done building and can potentially not be completed by the time Factory/snapshot has published. Having all this in place would make it clear when everything is ready for update. - new TW snapshot repo available - devel projects repo available for new snapshot Snapshot repos have the side effect of providing repo "locking" which should make updates with extra repos more reproducible and safe. Obviously, the non- snapshotted repos that currently exist can remain along side and folks could be free to choose. All in all virtually everything needed to set this up is already in place and would just require: - a consensus on where to place snapshot in repo path (probably influenced heavily by the technical aspects of OBS) - light zypper addition to handle automatically switching repo URLs - decide on snapshot point in devel/third-party repos I look forward to your thoughts. -- Jimmy