yum checks repositories before removing packages. why?

[Jonathan Berry]

On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 01:52:32 +0000, Michael A. Peters <mpeters at mac.com> wrote:
> 
> > My guess would be to update the headers so that it can be sure it can
> > resolve dependencies correctly.  That is only a guess, but it seems a
> > logical reason.
> 
> I don't think so, because you can disable repositories, clean all
> headers, manually add and remove stuff, and still yum remove stuff from
> repositories yum no longer watches.

Well, it goes ahead with what it knows in that case.  I don't know.  I
guess it gets its information mostly from RPM.  Do the headers contain
any dependency information?

> I'm guessing yum just does it because it's a transaction, and it isn't
> told what transaction to do it on and what not to do it on.

I thought about this too, but was trying to come up with a better
reason :).  You are probably right, the real reason is because it is
programmed to update headers on every transaction.  I guess it saves
it from doing it the next time it is run.
Anyway, to avoid this, you can run yum with the "-C" (uppercase)
option to avoid downloading headers unless needed.  So run "yum -C
remove <package>" if you would prefer yum not to check the
repositories.

Jonathan