I was wondering why fedora has choosen yum over apt-get

[Shahms King]

> 
> If that's all it took to fix the issue you could've done it by saying
> "apt-get install gnome-libs=<whatever-the-correct-version>" to force the
> downgrade. Or do "rpm -e --nodeps gnome-libs; apt-get install
> gnome-libs".

Neither of those worked, because some currently installed packages
required the ximian version (those packages would have been updated by
the FC packages) and some required the old version (those would not)
either way, apt decided the only solution was removing all of them.  The
interdependencies were more convoluted than apt could work out (and more
convoluted than I would expect it to work out).  I however, was more
than capable of resolving the issues provided my tools allowed me to do
so.  Apt did not, yum did.  It's as simple as that.

The second solution leaves the rpm database with missing deps, which apt
will complain about and then refuse to run.  However, the second
solution works if you replace apt with yum.  Yum doesn't have anyway
(that I'm aware of) for specifying a specific version, otherwise I
suspect the first method would have worked as well.

> Note that your solution required *downgrade* of a package, that's
> something no depsolver will even consider normally (even if they can)
> and it's generally just unrealistic to expect software to automatically
> come up with solutions to every imaginable dependency problem (in a way
> which satisfies you).

Nor do I expect it to.  However, I expect it to tell me that it cannot
resolve the dependency issues and then exit, rather than offering to
remove hundreds of packages.

> That said, yes, it'd be nice if apt had an "shut up and do what I say"
> mode when you're fixing up a system which is completely and totally
> busted and apt *could* help a lot if it wasn't so uptight about the
> temporary incoherency of the package database.

Exactly.

> 
> > I don't even know what you're trying to say here... Removing packages
> > when asked to update a completely unrelated package (in the absence of
> > "Obsoletes" is complete counter-intuitive and just asking for trouble,
> > especially when the default is 'Y' unlike yum).
> 
> Since you mentioned this having to do with Ximian ... yep, I know about
> the "db4 obsoletes db1" issue but thats really a packaging bug on behalf
> of Ximian which they get away with other depsolvers only because there
> never happened to be an update to db4 which would've then removed db1
> and broken the system anyway.
> 
> 	- Panu -

Yup, which can be worked around by having both versions installed
simultaneously and will work with both apt and yum with the appropriate
configuration changes until proper packages get released.  That was not
the issue. 
-- 
Shahms King <shahms at shahms.com>