F11 Proposal: Stabilization

[Seth Vidal]

i

On Wed, 19 Nov 2008, Callum Lerwick wrote:

> No actually it's simpler than that. What we want is more like package
> holds. More precisely, we want the *opposite* of package holds.
>
> What we're talking about here is a mode where no packages are updated,
> except for security fixes, and a list of packages I know I want the
> latest and greatest of.
>
> Which is pretty much that command line up there, plus security updates.
> Except it's sticky. Really that's something that annoys the hell out of
> me about yum, nothing sticks. If a repo is broken and needs to be
> disabled, or if I want to 'hold' a package I know is broken, I have to
> go mucking about in config files. And that results in my repo files no
> longer being updated because they've been modified and RPM so helpfully
> starts spewing .rpmnew files all over...
>
> When are we going to get the ability to store arbitrary bits of
> information about packages in the RPM database? We just need a simple
> generic key=value system. So front ends can store stuff like what repo
> the package came from, 'is-dep' flags, hold flags, dont-hold flags, and
> so on, but RPM itself doesn't have to actually know or care what they
> mean.

If you want to do this now, you can, via plugins. What you're describing 
above is fairly painful, though. It ultimately works out to be a mechanism 
for excluding updates, though.

-sv