yum question, reverting to old packages.

[Panu Matilainen]

On Sat, 2006-09-02 at 19:42 -0400, Richard Hally wrote:
> seth vidal wrote:
> > On Sat, 2006-09-02 at 23:13 +0300, Panu Matilainen wrote:
> >> On Sat, 2 Sep 2006, Jesse Keating wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Sat, 2006-09-02 at 13:32 -0400, Richard Hally wrote:
> >>>> So maybe we should remove --oldpackage/--nodeps/--force from rpm. It
> >>>> follows the gnome 'dumb it down' approach.
> >>> No, we just don't enable these functions in the "helper" apps.  We don't
> >>> want to help you ruin your system, we'll let you do that on your own
> >>> with RPM.
> >> People wishing for package downgrades are more often than not folks who 
> >> run rawhide and other experimental packages and just want an easy way to 
> >> back out a broken package. When a bad update has broken your system, what 
> >> difference does it make if downgrade is "potentially dangerous"?
> > 
> > This is the one point that I agree with. I looked at implementing the
> > simple flag to allow downgrades to happen provided the user jumped
> > through some hoops. I'm a bit crunched for time right now but if you
> > want to work on a patch for it I'd take a look.
> > 
> > The criteria for it, however, is that it can NEVER happen automatically.
> > There will be no config option that sets it to happen it will only be
> > something one does on the command line (and maybe it should implicitly
> > disable -y)
> > 
> > Seriously, I'd like it to be something that requires hoops, maybe even
> > flaming hoops. :)
> > 
> > -sv
> > 
> > 
> +1
> Perhaps a new option added to the set {install,update,remove,list,?} 
> Revert?
> And certainly disable -y.
> 
> My most common use case is (running rawhide):
>   go into /var/cache/yum/development, see what the previous package was 
> and 'rpm -Uvh --oldpackage <previous package>
> 
> If there were a revert option that did just that, it would be helpful.
> If doing --oldpackage trashes some part of your system, it is the rpms 
> deficiency not yum's.

Yum CVS just gained the ability to downgrade packages, with a little
help from yet another plugin. Means you can downgrade to manually
specified version of a package with --allow-downgrade assuming you have
the plugin installed.

Apt-rpm supports crack like 'apt-get install "foo<1.2"' but hell is
going to freeze over a couple of times before Seth will accept things
like that in Yum :) OTOH it would probably be possible to write a plugin
to "revert to previous version" now, implementation is left as an
excercise for the reader though...

	- Panu -