yum clean bug

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 12/9/05, Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot at laposte.net> wrote:
> So this is not-disposable data needing protection. I translate this into
> data that must be preserved. If it's not preserved it's not really
> protected, right ?

More evidence that communicating in English is inherently prone to
miscommunication.

Disposable and re-generatable are not perfectly equivalent concepts. 
While by definition data in the cache filesystem can be re-generated
when needed for tool operation, nothing says it preferable to
re-generate if it can be avoided.  Yum's clean policy is coded to
avoid unnecessary re-generation.

In fact, because cached items are defined to be resource intensive to
generate in the FHS definition for /var/cache ... i think that
automatically implies that well coded tools treat the cache
conservatively when removals are done to avoid wasteful calculation or
i/o when re-generating cache later that could have been avoided.  Its
the difference between doing something just because the action is
strictly allowed and refraining from doing something to avoid doing
more unncessary work later to re-generate time or i/o intensive cache
when it can be avoided.

-jef