yum --skip-broken update by default?

[John Ellson]

Seth Vidal wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, 12 Dec 2008, John Ellson wrote:
>
>> My primary complaint is that this dependency conflict
>> isn't listed in the daily yum updates dependency list and that yum 
>> doesn't deal with it automatically.
>
> How would you recommend it be dealt with? And remember we have to have 
> an acceptable behavior for 'yum -y update'.
>
>
> When there is a conflict should we:
> 1. assume the existing pkgs are better
> or
> 2. assume the installing pkgs are better
>
>
> argument in favor of 1 is that the existing pkgs are on the system and 
> should therefore be protected as a possible running service.
>
> argument in favor of 2 is that the user is requesting an action and 
> the user knows best, therefore the requested action must be the 'best' 
> action.
>
> I bet out of 1000 fedora users I'll get an almost even split between 
> them.
> -sv
>

I don't think we ask for broken packages to be installed by doing "yum 
update".      If would be different for "rpm -Uvh --force...."

The currently installed version should never be affected until an 
upgrade can be performed without force, error or exceptions.
This is basic transaction semantics.  (Where the transaction is not the 
entire "yum update", but each independent package dependency subtree).

Anyway, if a package has a conflict, then its not going to install, so 
the installed version wins.

Updates are only allowed if all conditions are met, otherwise something 
is going on that the packager or the developer didn't foresee, and this 
needs
to be reported back to them and fixed.   However, unrelated updates 
should be allowed to proceed.   With ~500M of updates
every day in Rawhide, its not acceptable to block the entire firehose.

Updates should never be forced, because then you have broken dependency 
rules or transformations.


As a user, its mostly not very interesting if an update is broken.  
Don't bother me with it, just tell the packager to fix it and come back 
later.

Occasionally I might be willing to move a few things out of the way 
manually to get an update to install, but for me this is the exception.


-- 
John Ellson