How to remove a *sub*package at end of life ?

[Miloslav Trmač]

On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 2:27 AM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> Just to reinforce: please, please do this; have something Obsolete: it.
> It is absolutely not correct to just leave the package dangling with
> dependencies that break upgrade processes and require users to remove it
> manually. Anything that breaks the upgrade bug from release to release
> is a bug.

OTOH, if the user installs $package and after an upgrade the package
is gone and the functionality is gone as well, the upgrade _has
failed_, in a very real sense.  Software should in general not fail
silently.  Yes, anything that breaks upgrade is a bug, but that
doesn't make any action that allows the upgrade to continue correct.

Ideally, we should be able to
1) tell that the user
    a) intentionally installed $package (as opposed to a it being
dragged by a dependency or by default), or
    b) cares for the package even if a) doesn't apply (e.g. has
configured or used it)
2) when starting the upgrade, detect things from 1) that will not
work, and discuss this with the user before starting to do anything
destructive.

With yum we can probably do 1a); we don't really have 1b); we
currently get a bad version 2) by the transaction check.

Obviously this can't be substantially changed for F19, but if anyone
were interested in helping with making this better - there was a F19
proposed feature
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/PreUpgrade_Assistant .
    Mirek