Testing Fedora - small (?) suggestion.

[n0dalus]

On 11/12/06, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > What should be done if the new package is
> > installable but causes other packages to become uninstallable? We
> > wouldn't usually want the new package to be held back in that case,
> > but I'm not sure what the best way to handle it is -- is it ok to just
> > (re)move the uninstallable package from the repository?
>
> I bet its not generally okay to do, i bet there will be some very
> interesting and significant problems with auto-removals from the
> rawhide tree if you attempt that.  They only way we are going to find
> out is if someone tracks the day-to-day behavior of rawhide with a toy
> set of scripts and buildups an empirical understanding as to expected
> gotcha situations.  It will be hard enough to make a strict holdback
> mechanism work effectively.. if you also try to auto-remove items from
> the tree to force consistency you risk massive cascade removals which
> don't do anyone any good.... triggers and obsoletes coulld complicate
> any removal logic you dream up. And again, auto-removals from Core
> will add yet more complications for Extras developers who are building
> Extras packages against deps in Core. If a package disappears from
> Core due to an auto-removal..doesn't that automatically require a
> cascade of removels for Extras packages tha depend on it...
> madness...just avoid removals from the tree.
>

Yeah I can't really think of a way to manage this case well.

It would still be nice to have packages held back in the case that
they require something that isn't there though, and I think it would
work quite well in stopping the majority of rawhide breakage.

n0dalus.