Fighting the i386 plague

[Michal Jaegermann]

On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 04:20:48PM -0500, Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Monday 22 January 2007 16:09, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> > Can anybody tell me why it wants to pull in the i386 version of
> > gutenprint to replace the x86_64 version of gimp-print-utils?  Is there
> > any way to convince it not to do things like that?
> 
> By default, if you ask yum to install <package>  and <package>.i386 + 
> <package>.x86_64 are available, you'll get them both.

You seem to be missing the point.  Jonathan did not ask to
"install gutentprint".  Look at this output:

 gutenprint              i386       5.0.0-4.fc7      extras-development  2.7 M
     replacing  gimp-print-utils.x86_64 4.2.7-24.fc7

and the same gimp-print-utils.x86_64 is "replaced" but x86_64 version
of gutenprint too.

In the past I was complaining about that behaviour and also did not
get very far.  See
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=199600
I was told that this is a packaging bug and yum does what it is
supposed to do.  I am still not convinced.  It is quite clear
that while doing replacements yum has a full information about
architectures involved.  If you indeed had installed
gimp-print-utils.i386 too then gutenprint.i386 would show up
in a transaction anyway.

> Those that DO think about it and concienciously 
> decide to NOT use that feature of their processor can add "exclude=*.i?86" 
> to /etc/yum.conf, as well as yum remove \*.i?86.

This is fine and dandy if you indeed do not have any i?86 packages
on the system; but if you do have some then you cannot use such
exclude.  If you happen to have gimp-print-utils.x86_64 _only_ then
you will still aquire unwanted gutenprint.i386, and whatever will
get pulled in by dependencies, unless you are very careful and
you will do explicitely

    yum install gutenprint.x86_64

before running the remainder of an update.  The command above will
replace gimp-print-utils.x86_64 and extra i?86 packages will be not
added to your system.  That is likely too much to ask from
an average user.

   Michal