DNF: why does it refresh metadata all the time

[Jon]

> and BTW i am not playing around that much on my Rawhide VM but had
> *two times* today by type "dnf whatever" the "there is already an
> instance, wating for PID..." nonsense caused by the background
> metadata refresh
>
> do you *really* think that's a good user-expierience?
>

No, that is unfortunate, and probably user unfriendly.

It would be great if the metadata were fetched, and put into place
atomically. Something where the downloading step of the fetching would
block on YOUR pid as a user you should never lose the battle, and if
you happen to get not a race with the finally atomic save, it would
briefly make you wait while the stdio took place. This is one thing
I've always though was unfortunate with yum, and would like to see
improve with DNF. More resilient handling of tasks, or more
concurrency, or whatever.  I guess if you were doing a clearing of
metadata, and in the back ground metadata were already being
fetched... the two tasks could be combined, and you really wouldn't
need to be blocked too much.  Perhaps someday that will be
implemented. =)