dependency tool for RedHat

Adrian Likins alikins at redhat.com
Thu Aug 7 23:16:11 UTC 2003


On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 12:09:43AM +0200, Peter Backlund wrote:
> 
> > You're making a point there. But unfortunatly, once again, up2date/current
> > aren't offering the same services as apt-get, yum, urpmi.. does up2date
> > allow you to install new rpms instead of just keeping the installed one up
> > to date?
> 
> Yes. Man is your friend :-)
> 
> Actually, I think the name of up2date is what causes many people to 
> erroneously think of it as "the windows update of red hat".
> 
> The only major thing up2date doesn't do, that apt/yum/urpmi does, is cascade 
> removal.
	hmm, didnt realize yum did cascade removal. 

	I admit I've put off adding that feature. Mainly
because it seems pretty dangerous, especially without
a concept of "pinning" or similar. And as seth already
mentioned, that concept has some problems, most noteably
the confusion it can cause users. And the confusion it
can cause programmers is kind of harsh as well ;-> 

	apt seems to use the pinning concept as the
basis for its policy engine for removals. Deciding
what packages are okay to remove in a caccade remove
is a bit picky. Leaf nodes are easy enough. And
packages that only depend on leaf nodes is probably
doable. But what happens when a request to remove,
say, "glib2" is made, is a bit more complicated.
Keep in mind that commandline up2date (and the
web triggered stuff) _has_ to work non-interactively.

	A simple rule of "dont ever remove anything
in this list" would probabaly be a good start. 
I'll make a note to look into it again it people
find it useful.


Adrian






More information about the devel mailing list