On Thu, 2020-01-30 at 15:40 +0000, Kenneth Wimer wrote:

From a SLES point of view, if the user has to register the products necessary to get the additional packages he/she is searching for, then the base-system definitely needs to be registered.

Yes, but you can search for the packages before deciding whether to register the system or not. Moreover, zypper does allow to search without registering the base system, and YaST should be on-par with zypper.

Is there a use-case to allow a user to install SLES, not register it, and then look for other packages belonging to another product? If they want to install any packages I assume they have to register all products first anyway (ie including the base-system).

The user can install SLES, not register it, and look for packages in extensions/modules (also known as products in SCC jargon). But are not allow for packages in a different base product. Of course, if he/she is interested in *installing a package*, registration will be required.

Everything else seems like a lot of work for questionable benefit (as I understand the situation but maybe I'm missing something).

In a nutshell, you should be able to search packages (no matter if the base system is registered or not). After you have decided with packages you want to install, you should register the base system (if needed) and the required addons. I am not sure whether I have clarified something :) Regards, Imo -- Imobach González Sosa YaST Team at SUSE LLC https://imobachgs.github.io/