x86_64, i386, and yum

[Edwin Huffstutler]

>From my searching, most of these have been discussed before (several times)
or have had various bugzillas I think, but I was just wondering if someone
could sum up any overall action to clean up the situation.


1. "yum install foo" installs both foo.i386 and foo.x86_64.  I know this
    has been hashed out before and declared "not a bug", but does anyone
    actually like the way this is working?  Yes, there is a good reason for
    it but the common case on x86_64 seems to be a misfeature.

2. If yum updates some package that has a *new* dependency that the old
   version did not have, yum will install both arch versions of the
   depended-upon package (see above).  When that happens with just one lib,
   it can by chain-reaction drag in about half of a whole i386 package
   set.  Whee.  neato.

3. If you have 2 arches of a package installed, and you "rpm -e" the i386
   version, any shared files (docs, etc) get removed.  Makes it hard to
   clean up from either of the above 2.


Surely there has to be a better way, I don't want two versions of every
darn thing installed on my machine, it is a waste.  Has someone looked into
fixing #3 so we can clean up things?  Is there a plan in the works?

Thanks,
  -Edwin

-- 
 Edwin Huffstutler 
 edwinh at computer.org