dnf replacing yum and dnf-yum

[Radek Holy]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bruno Wolff III" <bruno at wolff.to>
> To: devel at lists.fedoraproject.org
> Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2015 5:51:41 PM
> Subject: Re: dnf replacing yum and dnf-yum
> 
> On Tue, Apr 07, 2015 at 09:07:08 -0600,
>   Kevin Fenzi <kevin at scrye.com> wrote:
> >
> >dnf's default behavior is like yum with --skip-broken already.

This recurrent half-truth causes so much confusion. I'd like to ask everyone not to repeat it. Or at least also point to http://dnf.readthedocs.org/en/latest/cli_vs_yum.html#no-skip-broken please.

> Not when installing packages.

AFAIK, YUM's --skip-broken does two things:
1) it selects another version of the requested package if the most suitable cannot be installed
2) it skips the requested package if none of its versions can be installed

DNF does only (1) by default (and it can be disabled by --best). And it does it during both upgrades and installations. But only if the requested "pkg-spec" matches multiple packages. If the given "pkg-spec" is unique (e.g. foo-1-0.fc21.noarch) and the matching package cannot be installed, DNF fails.

(2) was intentionally not supported in DNF so far but we have been repeatedly receiving bug reports complaining that this "feature" is missing. We have finally received a use case for it and thus we are considering an implementation as a plugin.

> >
> >If thats not working and you need to find out more, add '--best' to see
> >things without 'skip-broken'.
> 
> My understanding is that --best can erase stuff (outside of obsoletes)
> and I don't want to do that in scripts.
> 
> >If that still doesn't work, please file a bug. ;)
> 
> I have already filed some bugs and RFEs since dnf replaced yum in rawhide,
> including about needing --skip-broken like functionallity for installs.

-- 
Radek Holý
Associate Software Engineer
Software Management Team
Red Hat Czech