Circular dependencies

[Michael Schwendt]

On Thu, 9 Nov 2006 10:05:54 +0100, Matthias Saou wrote:

> Michael Schwendt wrote :
> 
> > A circular dependency is the wrong way of thinking here. Probably it's
> > only applied because end-users are confronted with data package names and
> > might try low-level commands like "yum install somegame-data" instead of
> > telling an installer to add/remove "somegame".
> 
> Well, one might argue that without a circular dependency, end-users are
> confronted with a possibly unexpected behaviour :
> 
> yum install gamename (pulls-in huge gamename-data)
> yum remove gamename (leaves huge gamename-data installed...)

Why doesn't "yum remove" suggest to remove also leaf packages which are a
direct dependency of the thing to remove?

> > (In networked multi-machine installations it would even be plausible to
> > remove the dependency on the game data package, as it might be installed
> > only on a file server.)
> 
> And see bug reports flowing in... for anyone who might be facing that
> scenario, I'd suggest either installing with --nodeps or installing the
> game itself anyway :-)

Yes, of course, but --nodeps is forgotten once the next automated nightly
yum update kicks in, because missing deps are resolved automatically.