Notes on Yum Changes

Leonard den Ottolander leonard at den.ottolander.nl
Tue Sep 7 12:05:02 UTC 2004


Hi Rui,

On Tue, 2004-09-07 at 09:21, Rui Miguel Seabra wrote:
> What do you think of a security update that doesn't update because
> there's a bug in an unrelated package?

Firstly the fact that it interferes makes it related. Secondly it was
pointed out by more than one user that hiding details about conflicts
from the user (by skipping such packages) is probably worse than
erroring out with a message.

> How "potentially serious" a problem would that be?

The user should have noticed there's a problem from the warnings (s)he
received. If (s)he can't deal with those (s)he shouldn't be using
multiple repos in the first place.

> The job of a metapackager is making updating easier, not harder just as
> hard as if it wasn't there.

As pointed out the metapackager can not be expected to handle conflicts
if no standard on which all the repositories (and users) agree is
defined on how to do so.

In case of your above example, how should yum know it needs to skip the
package that holds the obsoletes, and not the package for which a
security update is released?

> There would be a resemblance if I was saying to install even if it
> screamed of a problem...

Well that is sort of what you suggest above. Install security update
even though there is a conflict and skip the other package. I still
don't see how that could solve a circular obsoletes by the way.

> Yum doesn't prompt. Barfs. You could be right if it did, but
> _it_doesn't_.

Seth already pointed out developer time is limited. Would you be so kind
to provide patches for more user friendly messages?

> > you write up the process for what has to occur and get EVERYONE to agree
> > on it and I'll write the code.
> 
> In a very highlevel way, I already did, wouldn't you say so?

No. You might have indicated a problem that you perceive, but you have
neither described a standard on how to handle it, nor have you got
everyone to agree on your solution.

Leonard "you may feel a slight sting, that's pride fuckin' wit ya. Fuck
pride!" den Ottolander.

-- 
mount -t life -o ro /dev/dna /genetic/research






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