Re: Specifying dependency install order

[Jeff Johnson <n3npq jbj gmail com>]

On Aug 22, 2006, at 11:54 AM, Christian Rohrmeier SCHERING DE wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I couldn't find this in Red Hat's Maximum RPM Book, so I'm asking  
> here:
>
> in my .Spec file, how do I control the install order of dependencies?
>
> The reason this is necessary is that I am installing an RPM that  
> does not
> specify its dependencies (who would do such a thing? Why, HP! Their  
> Insight
> Manager Agent and other HP management tools' RPMs have a long list of
> dependencies that however are however not specified in the RPMs' .spec
> files.) To deal with this terrible situation I can only make a meta- 
> package
> that specifies the dependencies. Since the dependencies are for  
> RPMs that
> also don't have their own deps specified (i.e. the HP System  
> Management
> Home Page must be installed before various other HP admin tools,  
> and before
> you can install the SMHP you have to install the Insight Manager  
> Agent, and
> none of this is specified in the damn RPMs) I need to tell my meta- 
> package
> exactly in what order to install these other RPMs.
>
> The only way I can think of doing it is to make a chain of meta- 
> packages
> (meta-a.rpm, meta-b.rpm, meta-c.rpm) one for each one of HP's  
> broken RPMs.
> This would be time-consuming, inelegant, difficult to maintain, and  
> simply
> suck rocks.

Yep, but sometimes rocks is all you have to suck, rpm orders package  
installs
based on dependency relations. No relations == any order is  
permitted, its called
mathematics.

> So, is there a way that I can do this inside of one RPM, where I  
> list the
> deps, and say which are to be installed in what order?

Nope. Well you can try invoking rpm -Uvh within %post, and rpm -evh  
within %preun,
adding --nodeps to install contained *.rpm files, but that cure may  
make you wish for tastier
rocks instead.

You can also try to do what anaconda does by adding --anaconda when  
installing,
and then insuring that the arguments given on the rpm CLI are ordered  
correctly.

Way easier to fix the original package, or add a meta-package by  
sucking rocks imho.

73 de Jeff