On Mar 3, 2008, at 9:44 AM, Stefan Westmeier wrote:

> Hi,
>
> just wanted to know if there is any chance that rpm packages can be  
> piped into the rpm command!?
>

Could be done, but there has to be some demonstrable need.

For starters, a single package on stdin is a rather naive idea. Most rpm
transactions are composed of 100's or 1000's of packages, and
stdin is just not the best input method for concatenated packages  
themselves.

The issue that needs solving is that *.rpm CLI arguments are open'd
twice, the 2nd time on on a (*notify) callback, in order to permit  
media to
be changed by installers.

But an open fdno could be cached and used instead. In fact rpm used
to do exactly that until the no. of open fdno's limit was exceeded  
(and distro's
had to support multiple cd install's).

OTOH, it would not be impossibly hard to pass the paths to packages,
rather than the packages themselves, on stdin. the rpm CLI already  
supports
package manifests, stdin could be used as an alternative manifest.

73 de Jeff