Removing duplicate apps after FC6 upgrade from FC5

[Karl Hakmiller]

On Saturday 17 February 2007, Steve Siegfried wrote:
> In part, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> > rpm really needs to go.
>
> To be replaced by what?
>
> Sure, rpmbuild & rpm are the Swiss Army knives of software
> packagers and package-loaders.  They can be difficult to use and
> aren't documented in the man pages very well.  But writing as
> someone who once implemented a software packaging/install scheme in
> the pre-rpm days to build, package, distribute, install and upgrade
> a proprietary version of Unix, it's an exceptionally difficult
> problem to solve and rpm has mostly solved it.
>
> Generally, when users have trouble with an %post failing, it's the
> fault of the people who created the rpm package, not rpm's fault. 
> This is what bugzilla's for, but for a number of diverse reasons,
> few Linux users bother reporting install and upgrade problems.  And
> if the creators of a package don't know it's busted in certain
> situations, how can they fix it?
>
> It might be nice if "rpm --test" did what it promised, but as I
> recall, it doesn't fake running %post scriptlets.  There's a good
> reason for that. It's yet another exceptionally hard problem to
> solve correctly for all the circumstances under which it's likely
> to be used.  Think for a second about how hard it is to fake (with
> --test) removing a file with "rm" and then 50 lines later testing
> for the file's existence as a trigger for doing a bunch of other
> stuff, including creating some files. Then generalize that for
> touch, cp, ln, et cetera.  It gets kinda hairy when you finally
> work your way up to faking cc and ld.  And for what? All to avoid a
> few "no such file or directory"/"unable to remove" type errors when
> you run rpm in anger...  err, without "--test". Like they used to
> say in WWII when fuel was being rationed: "Is this trip necessary?"
>  Nope.
>
> In the end, the only person responsible for what's on your machine
> is the person with the root password.  For desktop and notebook
> PCs, that's usually the person at the keyboard.  If you ignore
> warnings in the install and upgrade logs, be prepared to have dusty
> files laying around.  And, because of PATH issues, some of these
> dusty files will be used instead of the freshest stuff.
>
> But then Unix in general and Linux in particular have always been
> caveat emptor and RTFM kinds of operating systems.  If you sign up,
> you sign up for the whole deal.  And if you didn't sign up for
> that, well... buy a Mac.
>
> -S

I can't argue with your point about reporting to bugzilla so now that 
I've been called to my duty I'll go do that.  I really don't feel 
that I've been unfairly zapped by the problem I've described.  I 
don't do this for a living and I'm a volunteer user of FC with plenty 
of time on my hands so I'll take what comes as part of the game.
But, "buy a MAC"?  Not in this lifetime...

Karl L