Error: fedora-release-cloud conflicts with fedora-release-nonproduct-21-0.16.noarch

[Adam Williamson]

On Wed, 2014-11-12 at 19:29 +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Nov 2014 05:51:39 -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
> 
> 
> > > fedora-release-workstation-0:21-0.16.noarch
> > > generic-release-cloud-0:21-7.noarch
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Seems to me at some time a random generic dependency has been pulled in
> > > and now causes problems. 
> > 
> > Er, no? You have no generic package installed.
> 
> # rpm -q --whatrequires fedora-release-cloud
> no package requires fedora-release-cloud
> 
> # rpm --test -e fedora-release-cloud
> error: Failed dependencies:
> 	system-release-product is needed by (installed) fedora-release-21-0.16.noarch
> 
> As one can see, it's some virtual package or "capability", but not a direct
> or strict dependency on "fedora-release-cloud".

Yes. That's not "a random generic dependency".

> Even the "fedora-release-nonproduct" package provides "system-release-product".

That's correct, and intended - it sounds a bit odd when you write it
like that, but there isn't anything else particularly good to call the
'system-release-product' virtual provide. The basic idea is that all
Fedora installations must be explicitly identified as being a single
Product, or not being a Product: that's what the system-release-product
dependency is for.

> > (the point
> > is to use different default firewall configurations with different
> > Products),
> 
> That makes no sense.

You removed quite a lot of context. The reason *for the conflict in
firewall packages* is that Workstation wants to use a different firewall
configuration from other Products - this is the kind of difference for
which the whole Product setup was designed in the first place. The way
that's implemented is that the fedora-release-workstation package
depends on a firewall configuration package which conflicts with the
'standard' one, which other Products use.

Hence when you try to switch between Workstation and another Product or
'non-product', you have an issue with the firewall package - you need to
swap to the appropriate one.

> have called it "insane", because XFCE should not conflict with the GNOME
> desktop because of a "fedora-release-cloud" package that does not even
> specify any strict dependencies.

It doesn't. The situation with the desktop environment groups is
explained in the commonbugs notes. The cloud package really doesn't
involve itself in that issue; cloud tends to crop up when you're
struggling with this simply because it tends to be the winner when yum
tries to solve the system-release-product requirement without any hints
(I think because it has the equal-shortest dep chain of any of the
packages that provide system-release-product , and comes first
alphabetically among all those with the shortest dep chain). But the
real reason you have issues with the desktop environment groups is
because they explicitly require their matching fedora-release-(product)
package - the Xfce desktop environment group requires
fedora-release-nonproduct . That's so that when you do a Fedora
*install* with Xfce, you get the right product package (not something
random, i.e. cloud). The case where you use the environment groups as a
way to install desktops after system installation wasn't fully
considered when people were trying to implement the Product design.

As the Common Bugs entry and the bug report note, given the way Products
are implemented and the way comps works, it's not at all a trivial
problem to 'solve' such that the correct fedora-release-(product)
package gets installed at system install time but you can also simply
deploy additional desktops post-install. I doubt we'll be able to come
up with a satisfactory 'fix' for F21. But read the bug report for full
details, I don't want to rehash everything...
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net