Thanks to Máirín’s posting I got aware of the Pulp project.
What is it? I had a brief look at it, it is a Red Hat sponsored project with a similar functionality like Spacewalk and RHN Satellite.
This brings me to the question: Is Pulp is intended to be a replacement of Spacewalk? It can make sense, it is written in Python as Cobbler is. Cobbler and Spacewalk are not really playing nice together. Spacewalk used Java, Perl and Python.
Anyway, Pulp seems to be in its early childhood, but it seems to be a really interesting project. What are the plans for the future? And what are the plans for Spacewalk and thus RHN Satellite?
Having fun? As soon as I get the time to install it and give Pulp a closer look….
One of the major downsides of Spacewalk is that it needs Oracle DB, and this is unlikely to change anytime soon (they’re working in PostfgreSQL support, but the code base is a nightmare).
Spacewalk’s had a rough time getting contributions outside the RH people, and I think a new fresh project well thought from the ground will outstrip it in the midterm.
My two cents 😉
Pulp is an attempt to carve off a chunk of Spacewalk’s functionality and do it well with out a GUI, or Oracle Database, or any of the other things that make Sapcewalk such a nexus of dependencies (Perl, Pyton and Java all on one project!). Ideally, Spacewalk will use Pulp in the future, or what ever the overall management solution is for RPM based systems management.
Its been a while since I worked on it (about half a year now) and I was really only on a small portion of the project, so I don’t remember the details too deeply, but it grew out of a need for more scalable, configurable and distributable package and entitlement management.