Proposed F19 Feature: Yum Groups as Objects

[Stephen Gallagher]

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On Mon 28 Jan 2013 09:43:56 AM EST, Jan Zelený wrote:
> On 28. 1. 2013 at 08:21:57, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
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>> On 01/28/2013 07:58 AM, Jaroslav Reznik wrote:
>>> = Features/YumGroupsAsObjects =
>>> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/YumGroupsAsObjects
>>>
>>> Feature owner(s): James Antill <james at fedoraproject.org>
>>>
>>> Change the default yum configuration from group_command=compat to
>>> group_command=objects.
>>>
>>> == Detailed description == Currently yum groups work as a simple
>>> substitution, so "yum group remove foo" works as though you took
>>> every package from foo and passed it to "yum remove". This tends to
>>> not be what users expect, for example "yum group install kde-
>>> desktop" and then "yum group remove kde-desktop" will end up
>>> removing packages (like abrt-desktop). This feature changes that so
>>> that groups are installed as real objects, meaning that when a user
>>> does "yum group install foo" yum will mark that the packages from
>>> foo are being installed (as before) but also that a group called
>>> foo is being installed and that those packages are installed
>>> because of it. Later if the group is removed, yum will remove the
>>> group and only those packages that were installed because of the
>>> group install/upgrade commands.
>>
>> This doesn't really seem like the optimal solution here. It seems to
>> me that it might be a better solution that you note which "groups"
>> were installed and then at 'yum group remove foo' you remove any
>> packages in it that are not ALSO owned by other installed groups. That
>> seems less prone to issues if you uninstall groups that have shared
>> packages in anything other than reverse order of installation.
>>
>> Of course, after that we also have the issue of leaf nodes. Perhaps we
>> should ignore any packages that are dependencies of other installed
>> software too?
>
> Thank you for pointing this out. We are aware of this issue and we plan to
> address it. James already implemented something similar for repositories and
> to implement the same thing for groups, we first need groups to be treated as
> objects.
>
> Anyway as the proposal indicates, changing the default (treating groups as
> objects) won't have any impact on the behavior in this way. If you uninstall
> group, it will remove any packages that have been installed as dependencies.
> But the same thing happens today. AFAIU the only difference in behavior
> observed by users will be that packages that are explicitly installed won't be
> removed once the group is removed.
>


While this is obviously an enhancement over the current state of
things, I'm not certain it's a sufficient improvement to warrant a
Feature. In my mind, the difficulty with handling the descendant
packages on removal is a more interesting problem.
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