On 31 March 2017 at 20:05, Rex Dieter <rdieter@math.unl.edu> wrote:

If you think versioned Obsoletes are bad or unwise, it shows some naivety or
inexperience: Ever had to fix/recover from erroneous Obsoletes or had to
deal with undo/revert of them (without resorting to introducing epoch)?

I suggest you place a little more trust those who have more experience (like
current or former FPC members) on the topic.

No .. please. Don't try to think about I may be thinking. This is pointless :)

And no, I'm not thinking about thing which you wrote :)

As an engineer many years ago I've formed two "laws" about errors/bad cases

1) All bad/error cases you can put only in two baskets: *simple* and *stupid*

2) Longer time you are working on some issues than *probability* that it is something stupid *is only growing*.

According to those two "laws" at the moment *I think* that what it was codified in FPG was caused by something stupid :)

Lets say .. it was something like misinterpretation when in on upgrade test package from 2.0 to 3.0 someone forgot to remove "Obsolete: test-static".

At the moment it is IMO *only* working hypothesis that it was exactly something like this, Other even less likely possibility is that it some bug in rpm (IMO possibility close to zero)

However if it was something like this forming such advice in FPG someone siple lost from the radar that in 3.0 Obsolete line should be *removed*.

Such case is like trying to fix in C some issue with code not removed after last changes iteration not by removing those lines but by unconditional jump over such fragment.

If it will be like this it will be no one error. Simple such things sometimes happens ..

Again as an engineer I can tell that making mistakes is not en issue. Problem is when such mistakes happens many times not causing any procedural changes.

This is what exactly says old Latin sentence "Errare humanum est, sed in errare perseverare diabolicum" which can be translated as "To err is human, but to persist in error is diabolical".

(I like more quite old Polish translation which a bit more poetical "błądzić jest rzeczą ludzką ale zbawienną powstawać z upadku" which is without "diabolical" connotation :) )

Together here we have enough knowledge and experience to not relay on *trust*.

So .. please back together to the meritum.

Let's try to reproduce exactly this case which caused forming (MO incorrect) advice in FPG :)

kloczek

Tomasz Kłoczko | LinkedIn: http://lnkd.in/FXPWxH