Too many unowned directories

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sun, 01 Feb 2009 12:41:11 +0100, Florian wrote:

> As far as I can see right now there is only one thing that RPM could do:
> Create a file requires to all directories that the packages places files in 
> and is not part of the package itself. From my (RPM) perspective this is a 
> good, save and simple to implement solution.

So far, so good. It would make up a %dir entry for all directories not
included in the package's %files list.

> But it comes with the price of 
> yum requiring (and though downloading) the file list for each and every 
> transaction.

Why that?

There is no "Requires: /orphaned/directory" anywhere in the package.
Yum does not and would not care about the files metadata at all.
RPM would simply add the missing "%dir /orphaned/directory" on-the-fly
during package installation. That would make it possible to remove the
directory with the last package that owns it (RPM %dir refcount == 1 and
directory being empty).