yum - lack of features

[Paul Howarth]

John Summerfied wrote:
> Paul Howarth wrote:
> 
>>
>>> I tried the above once, and got in a mess;
>>> "yum install" was not a straightforward inverse of "yum remove".
>>
>>
>>
>> Yes, this is true.
>>
>> Consider the package sendmail-cf, which depends on sendmail.
>>
>> "yum remove sendmail" will remove sendmail-cf too, because it depends 
>> on sendmail.
>>
>> "yum install sendmail" will install sendmail, but not sendmail-cf, 
>> since sendmail itself does not depend on sendmail-cf.
> 
> 
> The correct inverse is
> yum install sendmail-cf
> because that's what the dependencies say: sendmail-cf depends on sendmail,
> 
> Think about it.

True, but I was agreeing with the statement that `"yum install" was not 
a straightforward inverse of "yum remove"', which is true.

The inverse of a "yum remove" may require specifying multiple packages 
for a "yum install". Consider packages a, b, and c, where b and c are 
dependent on a. "yum remove a" will remove all three packages, and "yum 
install b c" would be needed to get them all back again.

Paul.