Re: anaconda installing packages out of order (RHEL5.2)

[Brian Reichert <reichert numachi com>]

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 04:15:36PM -0000, Moray Henderson (ICT) wrote:
> I've been running into that problem too.  I think Anaconda re-orders
> the packages as it works out dependencies, so (as far as I can tell)
> you can't rely on pkgorder or comps.xml to give the final install
> order.  (If I'm wrong about that, I would be very grateful if someone
> would tell me how to do it.)
> 
> The key to the solution is the difference between the rpm directives "Requires" and "PreReq" in the .spec files.

Indeed, this is a useful (ableit unexpected) distinction; using PreReq
instead of Requires (in my case) does yield the desired results.

Thanks for the feedback!

> "Requires: x" means "this package requires the x package in order to _run_".  If both packages appear in the same rpm transaction, the transaction will succeed _but x may not be installed first_.
> 
> "PreReq: x" means "this package requires x to be present _before it will install properly_".  In this case, if both packages appear in the same transaction, rpm will ensure that x is installed first.

I'm kind of surpised the wad of magical dependancy determination in the RPM
packaging did not infer the dependancies of pre- and post-install scripts.
But, not very surpised...

> Moray.
> "To err is human.  To purr, feline"
> http://members.aol.com/edgwddirk 

-- 
Brian Reichert				<reichert numachi com>
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