up2date prefetching list of available packages

up2date helper that pulls a list of available packages from the Red Hat Network

patch for up2date provider that enables prefetching

Urgh. This patch has caused me to look at the prefetching for yum, since it looks like you've just copied the model it uses. There's no reason to use the @updates class variable.

Something like the following should work just fine:

    def self.prefetch(packages)
        if Process.euid != 0
            raise Puppet::Error, "The yum provider can only be used as root"
        end
        super
        python(YUMHELPER).each_line do |l|
            l.chomp!
            next if l.empty?
            if l[0,4] == "_pkg"
                hash = nevra_to_hash(l[5..-1])
                [hash[:name], "#{hash[:name]}.#{hash[:arch]}"].each do |n|
                    if package = packages[n]
                        package.provider = new(hash)
                    end
                end
            end
        end
    end

Then the latest method just returns properties[:ensure], or whatever the attribute is for the value you want.

In other words, you replace the provider with a new provider that has the prefetched data.

In fact, if you look at the 'prefetch' method in lib/puppet/provider/package.rb, you'll see that the base class already does this, it just does it based on the 'instances' class method.

The reason the prefetch doesn't use instances or replace providers is that the rpm::instances method already lists all the currently _installed_ packages. The prefetch lists all the packages that are available as an update.

Ah, right; that makes sense. Don't you need to combine them in some way, though, so that you get both the current state and the latest available version?