Yum packages (again)

[Bill Davidsen]

Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-02-27 at 17:10 -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
>> Da Rock wrote:
>>> Ok, I know a little of this has been covered before, but I have some new
>>> info after some exhaustive debugging.
>>>
>>> After the feedback regarding the repo conflicts, I decided to resolve
>>> this once and for all. I uninstalled all mplayer, x264 and xine
>>> packages, and reinstalled only the livna versions.
>>>
>>> This produced mixed results. Firstly, Yum reported the packages
>>> installed. When you go back and check what is installed (version, etc)
>>> it stated that the freshrpms versions were installed- but only some. So
>>> I ended up with some livna and some freshrpms, despite the fact that I
>>> selected only livna packages to be installed.
>>>
>>> So I uninstalled it all again. This time I went to the livna site and
>>> downloaded and installed them manually. Now it came up and said
>>> installed, but some codecs weren't installing due to a missing
>>> libx264.so.56. I checked again what was installed and what provided
>>> x264- livna was installed.
>>>
>>> This seemed very confusing to me, so I physically checked the contents
>>> of the rpm. The livna package did contain the library file
>>> libx264.so.56- so why didn't the livna package repo recognise its own
>>> files?
>>>
>>> I also checked the freshrpms version, and this contained libx264.so.58.
>>> Technically then, Yum shouldn't be declaring that libx264.so.56 is
>>> contained in the freshrpms file, and the 2 versions shouldn't conflict,
>>> should they?
>>>
>>> So I put it to all- what the hell is going on here? Neither repo appears
>>> to be able to declare what the packages ACTUALLY provide, and Yum is
>>> getting very confused. So who's fault is it? Where does the
>>> responsibility lie?
>>>
>> With you. Once you have used a non-fedora repository you have assumed 
>> responsibility for determining compatibility and resolving all 
>> conflicts. Once you start using more than one you you have assumed 
>> responsibility for those conflicts as well. The fault is yours.
>>
>> The solution is to put both repositories in as disables in the config, 
>> then use --enablerepo on one or the other. I don't suggest mixing them, 
>> I'm still trying to sort a problem I caused myself using only livna, 
>> something used by pine isn't right and I can't find out what to get it 
>> out and clean it up. Fortunately it's not critical on that system.
>>
>> I understand your problem, but you should understand it's YOUR problem, 
>> you caused it, the responsibility lies with you. And for my broken 
>> machine, with me.
> 
> Though this is technically true, it's unhelpful to the naive user (and
> we're all naive at some time or another). It would not be beyond reason
> for Yum to know that certain repos work well with each other and others
> don't, and to warn the user when conflicts might occur. A plugin
> perhaps?
> 
My impression, based on the question "So who's fault is it? Where does 
the responsibility lie?" was that the O.P. was looking for someone 
(else) to blame. I did very clearly tell him who was responsible, but I 
did offer some suggestions regarding how to set up a system to only use 
alternate repos when explicitly asked.

I wasn't going out of my was to be diplomatic, but I didn't call him 
names, either. ;-)

And I did mention that even taking precautions, you can cause yourself 
problems.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot