Proposed F19 Feature: Yum Groups as Objects

[Jaroslav Reznik]

On Monday 28 of January 2013 10:12:29 Stephen Gallagher wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Mon 28 Jan 2013 09:43:56 AM EST, Jan Zelený wrote:
> > On 28. 1. 2013 at 08:21:57, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >> Hash: SHA1
> >> 
> >> 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.

When I announced the feature, I understood it the same way - it's going to 
solve the problem in your mind. Also it changes defaults but seems even with 
defaults changes, the result will be same (very similar).

So yes, now I'm not sure this is really a Feature, even you know I'm fan of as 
many features as we can have not to miss anything important. And actually it 
served this purpose - there's discussion and clarification...

Jaroslav

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.13 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/
> 
> iEYEARECAAYFAlEGlV0ACgkQeiVVYja6o6PuoACfYM8rex0M06mRgUrMuFOGrQtj
> qMcAn329k7jfDUgz3ccbyfoTk1pSZxGB
> =4YsU
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----