Dependency loops considered harmful?

[Mamoru Tasaka]

Miroslav Lichvar wrote, at 09/04/2008 03:02 AM +9:00:
> On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 07:39:38PM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
>> Actually its more about the removal scenario, lets say someone does:
>> df
>> yum install vegastrike    (drags in vegastrike-data)
>> df                        (who thats big)
>> <play vegastrike>         (hey that games sucks and eats up my HD-space)
>> yum remove vegastrike
>> df                        (WTF, why am I still missing 0.4 Gigs of HD-space ??)
> 
> But that isn't much different from a case when I install any package
> with rich dependencies, say, gnome-session and after removing the
> package there will be dozens of packages left I didn't want.
> 
> Actually, the loop may cause that I won't remove the game, because I
> forgot I've installed it and it doesn't show up as a leaf.
> 
> Until yum or rpm is able to track packages installed only to satisfy
> dependencies, this will always be a problem. Why make the game data a
> special case?

Umm... agreed.
When I install some binary rpms rebuilt by koji scratch build to review
the package it often pulls so many depdendencies, especially when they
are Java packages.
In such case I usually keep the log what yum installed to satisfies
the dependencies, and when the review finishes, I remove all the rpms
written in the yum log.

So while I can understand the idea that game maintainers want yum
to remove both program rpm and data rpm simultaneously, I don't think
this is the strong support for making intentional depedency loop.

Mamoru