Every installation guide I've ever seen which requires an RPM install starts with the instruction "download the repo", usually accompanied by a wget, and then, separately, says to rpm -i or rpm -U the downloaded file.
Except I've noticed rpm supports remote URI schemes (at least, it supports FTP, HTTP and HTTPS). Clearly, to install a remote repo, rpm must already download the file (maybe not to disk, but I'd be surprised if it didn't). So, presumably, the issue isn't that rpm can't just install the thing given a link.
My Question
Besides the utility of having an audit trail, the convenience that comes with being able to do the install offline, and the fact that a failure on install wouldn't require a redownload of the RPM, are there any good reasons to install from the local drive? Does rpm treat local files differently?
-- Also, just in case anyone happens to know --
If the files are downloaded to disk (which, again, would be the overwhelmingly sanest thing to do), are they removed at program termination, or do they persist? And if they do persist... where?
