Dependency loops considered harmful?

[Seth Vidal]

On Thu, 2008-09-04 at 13:07 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> Seth Vidal wrote:
> > Okay this is obviously just Proof code so take it as read - but grab
> > this script:
> > 
> > http://skvidal.fedorapeople.org/misc/remove-recurse.py
> > 
> > and run it with one arg being the pkg you wish to remove. It will print
> > out what it would end up doing if it was removed.
> > 
> > for example:
> > 
> > # python remove-recurse.py easytag
> > remove easytag
> > removing id3lib-3.8.3-20.fc9.i386 b/c it is not required by anything
> > else
> > removing libmp4v2-1.5.0.1-6.fc9.i386 b/c it is not required by anything
> > else
> > libmp4v2.i386 0-1.5.0.1-6.fc9 - e
> > id3lib.i386 0-3.8.3-20.fc9 - e
> > easytag.i386 0-2.1-5.fc9 - e
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > It doesn't actually change anything, just prints out what would happen.
> > then tell me which (and I'm sure there  are many) cases it doesn't
> > properly address.
> > -sv
> > 
> > 
> [badger at Clingman tmp]$ sudo ./remove-recurse.py yum
> [...]
> removing pygpgme-0.1-8.fc9.i386 b/c it is not required by anything else
> removing python-iniparse-0.2.3-3.fc9.noarch b/c it is not required by
> anything else
> 
> As it turns out, I personally need both of these deps.  I have a script
> in ~/bin/ that uses pygpgme.  I also am working on fas in a local
> checkout which requires pygpgme.  And I'm evaluating python-iniparse and
> python-configobj to see which one I'm going to be using for some fedora
> infrastructure scripts.
> 
> So -- I like having a script that can remove things recursively.  Even
> better if I could do:
>   sudo remove-recurse.py yum --exclude pygpgme
> 
> I just wouldn't want this kind of thing to be automatic or to be the
> default when I do "yum remove"
> 

I mostly agree. I sorta think that _maybe_ your case is becoming more of
the edge case and a lot more folks want to remove all the things that
just got dragged in when they ran: yum install this_really_cool_thing

So, if there were an option to let you disable leaf removal would that
work out?

-sv