yum - lack of features

[Jim Cornette]

Timothy Murphy wrote:

>Sean O Sullivan wrote:
>
>  
>
>>>1) Can't force a reinstall of package
>>>      
>>>
>>yum remove package
>>yum install package
>>    
>>
>
>My impression is that this is - or was? - rather dangerous.
>Doesn't "yum remove <pkg>" also remove any packages which require <pkg>,
>which may be rather a lot?
>  
>
I found out today when trying to trim down an "everything install". I 
tried using the add/remove feature and it mostly failed. I then tried  
yum for removing evolution, which I don't use. When yum determined the 
packages to remove, it was most of gnome related programs. Fortunately, 
I answered no to the question. I then used rpm to remove evolution.
RPM is good to use for individual packages. When it comes to removing 
programs via yum, it is useful if you do not have a slew of packages to 
remove.

>I tried the above once, and got in a mess;
>"yum install" was not a straightforward inverse of "yum remove".
>
>Hopefully I'm wrong?
>  
>

The reason that I mentioned the rpm --justdb feature to trick yum into 
thinking that no package was installed was to overcome deps where 
somehow not all packages the application were pulled in. Removing the 
database entry only will allow you to run yum to pull in the needed 
packages on its next install round. If the package is critcal, it makes 
installing it again a bit less risky.

>Personally, I would use rpm if I wanted to remove and re-install a package.
>
>  
>
If you have programs that chain a slew of packages, your choice might be 
different. Also, if you do an everything installation, you pull in all 
sorts of language packages. Yum is great for running commands like
yum remove "*langpack*"
to get rid of languages you do not use. Of course if you needed a 
particular language, you could exclude it before dropping all the langpacks.

Jim


-- 
"All we are given is possibilities -- to make ourselves one thing or another."
-- Ortega y Gasset