further package removals/potential package removals

Toshio Kuratomi toshio at tiki-lounge.com
Mon Jan 24 16:54:51 UTC 2005


On Mon, Jan 24, 2005 at 09:02:15AM +0100, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> 
> > Meanwhile, new packaging for, say, nautilus which has
> >     Requires(missingok): gnome-vfs2-smb
> > and a depsolver that tests RPMSENSE_MISSINGOK drop a sub-tree that
> > is optional.
> > 
> > I fail to see a mulberry bush, except in this loopy and endless fretting.
> > 
> > Show me the mulberries *please*.
> 
> 
> user goes from package-1.0-1.0 to package-1.1-1.0 which now had a
> Requires(missingok): gnome-vfs2-smp. Fine; yum (for the sake of
> argument) grabs gnome-vfs2-smp as well and everything is happy.
> Now the user gets annoyed by the "bloat" and removes gnome-vfs2-smp.
> Still fine.
> 
> Then a security update comes out, package-1.1-1.1 and the user of course
> upgrades to that. yum will *AGAIN* pull in gnome-vfs2-smp. User gets
> really annoyed and considers this not-fine.
> 

As the current answer to "Can I do a yum upgrade of my system?" is
"Read the Release Notes to see what special magic anaconda knows about and
then do the upgrade at your own risk"  I think yum/apt/etc shouldn't default
to adding a missingok package when upgrading.  This should only be something
that anaconda does.  Of course, I don't code for any of the package managers
so it's not up to me.

-Toshio




More information about the fedora-devel-list mailing list