FC5 - T3 - Had enough. Package Managers, Yumex is crap.

[Daniel B. Thurman]

-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com
[mailto:fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com]On Behalf Of Tim
Sent: Sunday, March 05, 2006 6:26 PM
To: For users of Fedora Core releases
Subject: RE: FC5 - T3


On Sun, 2006-03-05 at 13:30 -0800, Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
> Now....  getting back to the ORIGINAL problem...  how to add ALL the
> new packages that I foregoed in the installation of FC5-T3 and THEN
> update it all.  It has been a REAL CHORE!!!  Grrrrrr....  Someone
> ought to replace the crummy add/remove package manager for something
> better. It is real hokey.

I should have thought that yum, or something like yumex, would be the
easiest way.  And not to install then update, but simply install the
latest available versions of packages, letting it resolve what's needed
to go along with them.

-- 

Unfortunately, yumex and package manager is really a bad
design IMHO because when I went through all the trouble
of identifying the packages I wanted installed (it was
massive), all of these packages would spend 12 hours
downloading GB of files from the Internet, start testing
the transaction and either crash or hang the FC5-T3 completely,
i.e I could no longer ping FC5-T3.

Restarting the package programs, would perform a yum clean up
effectively wiping out the 12 hours (3 times) or so downloaded
package I was looking for the designer of these package program
and wanted to say a few unkind words.  I was definately displeased.
Why do the designer of these package programs decide to do an
automatic cleanup and don't even bother asking the user first
is beyond me. 

Never mind that this is T3 - this is a really horendeous way
to treat a tester when they cannot even download the updates
or packages needed to get FC5-T3 updated to a useful state.
Maybe the best thing to do is to download the RPM files and
do a rpm manual install and toss these package managers
completely out of my FC5-T3 system.

Hell, with yumex, I tried to select 5 packages - it went through
the whole thing up to transaction testing and the whole program
dropped dead, i.e. the entire application program disappeared
and no trace/log of what the heck happened.  Yumex is in serious
need of repair - it is extremely unstable.  Package Manager is
probably more stable but is dumber than an ox.

I think I will stop here and take a long break. I will let the
other testers do the fun part of testing.  I am just not going
to continue to rubber hose my self and scream 'mea culpa'.

Had enough,
Dan