DNF: why does it refresh metadata all the time

[poma]

On 21.06.2014 03:03, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Fri, 2014-06-20 at 23:27 +0200, poma wrote:
>> On 20.06.2014 17:55, Dan Williams wrote:
>>> On Fri, 2014-06-20 at 08:55 +0200, drago01 wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 8:59 PM, Jared K. Smith
>>>> <jsmith at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 2:01 PM, Reindl Harald <h.reindl at thelounge.net>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> if *that* is what is supposed to make DNF faster it's just a lie
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> This is not the only thing that DNF does differently to try to make package
>>>>> installations and updates go faster (or appear to go faster).  Calling the
>>>>> developers liers doesn't help the situation any.
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> if i am really interested in updates now i do "yum clean metadata && yum
>>>>>> upgrade"
>>>>>> for many years simply because you don't know how accurat you metadata are
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Sure, but you have to understand -- you're a power user.  You know enough to
>>>>> do this in yum for your particular use case, which means you probably know
>>>>> enough to change the DNF settings with regards to cron-based metadata
>>>>> retrieval.  What I think you're missing (and frankly, seem to miss in the
>>>>> lot of fedora-devel discussions you take part in) is that Fedora isn't
>>>>> engineered around *your* particular needs.  We do things mostly by
>>>>> consensus, and aim to make it a pleasant experience for the *average* user
>>>>> (or whatever we have in the Fedora community that approximates an average
>>>>> user), and not just for power users with very specific needs and
>>>>> requirements.
>>>>>
>>>>> Whether you like it or not, one of the most common complaints about yum
>>>>> (especially from people coming from another package management system) is
>>>>> that it seems slow because of the necessity to download the metadata.  The
>>>>> DNF developers -- in trying to address this common complaint -- had solved
>>>>> it by handling metadata in a different way.  They've also added settings so
>>>>> that power users like you and I can tune it to better fit our particular
>>>>> needs.
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> and *no* traffic is not cheap everywhere, by far not
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I probably understand this better than a lot of people on this list, as I've
>>>>> been on a bandwidth-limited connection for the past nine years.  Only in the
>>>>> past month have I been able to get high speed internet in my home that
>>>>> wasn't limited to a few gigabytes per month.  So yes, I completely
>>>>> understand that traffic isn't cheap (or fast) everywhere.
>>>>
>>>> It should be at least smart enough to not do it on mobile broadband
>>>> (like packagekit does).
>>>
>>> Python + D-Bus example for detecting WWAN NetworkManager 0.9+ is here:
>>>
>>> http://cgit.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/tree/examples/python/dbus/is-wwan-default.py
>>>
>>> Dan
>>>
>>>
>>
>> This is super duper, however if wwan is on the router as Ranhald wrote, you can only click your heels three times and repeat, "There's no place like home."
>
> Certainly.  But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to fix 50%, even if
> we can't achieve the stars.  So I think there's a ton of value in doing
> this despite the fact that we can't be perfect.
>
> Dan
>

Your fame is well deserved, Spaniard.
However, a sensible default is what it is.


poma