Yet another frustration with Fedora package management

[Radek Holy]

----- Original Message -----

> From: "Hedayat Vatankhah" <hedayat.fwd at gmail.com>
> To: "Development discussions related to Fedora"
> <devel at lists.fedoraproject.org>
> Sent: Monday, January 5, 2015 7:50:27 PM
> Subject: Re: Yet another frustration with Fedora package management

> Radek Holy <rholy at redhat.com> wrote on Mon, 5 Jan 2015 03:03:30 -0500 (EST):

> > ----- Original Message -----
> 

> > > From: "Hedayat Vatankhah" <hedayat.fwd at gmail.com>
> > 
> 
> > > To: "Development discussions related to Fedora"
> > > <devel at lists.fedoraproject.org>
> > 
> 
> > > Sent: Saturday, January 3, 2015 9:42:01 PM
> > 
> 
> > > Subject: Yet another frustration with Fedora package management
> > 
> 

> > > Hi!
> > 
> 
> > > Summary: Try to prevent a package from being updated/installed from
> > > repositories regardless of the package management tool you use. As it
> > > seems,
> > > then only way you can do this is to exclude it from the repositories
> > > themselves inside their configuration file in /etc/yum.repos.d/, because
> > > these are the only common settings between all three
> > > (yum/dnf/PackageKit).
> > > TBH, I'm not sure about PackageKit, but I feel that it don't read
> > > /etc/dnf/dnf.conf as it doesn't use DNF but its backends. This is fine if
> > > the package is in a single known repository, but what if it is in 3
> > > repositories that you might not be aware of all of them?
> > 
> 

> > > More details:
> > 
> 
> > > As you might already know, nvidia drivers in RPMFusion F21 repositories
> > > doesn't work for all nvidia cards. In one system, I finally installed
> > > akmod-nvidia from RPMFusion F20 repositories which worked fine. Soon
> > > after
> > > I
> > > realized that I should exclude akmod-nvidia and dependencies from F21
> > > repositories. I added "exclude=*nvidia*" to /etc/yum.conf as I was lazy
> > > to
> > > check which repository these packages come from. But then I noticed that
> > > dnf
> > > doesn't consider it excluded. Then I thought that probably PackageKit
> > > doesn't use dnf.conf too. So, how should I excluded these packages? Well,
> > > these were in rpmfusion-nonfree-updates repository, so I added the
> > > exclude
> > > directive there. Then I found that I should add it to rpmfusion-nonfree
> > > repository too. However, since I use yum-plugin-local I also have a local
> > > repository (I actually copied the repository from another system, so it
> > > was
> > > enabled on this system so that I could install software from it) which
> > > also
> > > included these packages. Therefore, I should exclude "*nvidia*" in 3
> > > repository configuration files to make sure (hopefully!) that these will
> > > not
> > > be installed by any package manager I know.
> > 
> 

> > > Suggestion: Please add a single configuration file to configure common
> > > package manager options (Specially between DNF and PackageKit, which are
> > > there to stay). As I mentioned in "F21 downloads repository metadata in 3
> > > places!" thread, Fedora package management should be consistent and
> > > integrated; and the current situation is really frustrating. If I want to
> > > exclude some packages, I should be able to do it once for all. If I want
> > > to
> > > disable automatic download of metadata/packages, there should be a single
> > > place where I can define my desired package management policy. If I want
> > > to
> > > specify default metadata_expire timeout for all repositories, there
> > > should
> > > be one place to do it. There really should be a single package management
> > > policy that must be respected by every package manager in Fedora,
> > > specially
> > > the main ones: DNF and PackageKit (and currently Yum).
> > 
> 

> > Hi, I understand the frustration. On the other hand, I personally hate
> > anything that is centralized. Just an idea: what about a simple modular
> > tool
> > (maybe installed by default) which would be able to set options like this
> > at
> > all the places? Potentially it could be able to synchronize a subset of
> > settings between given programs.
> 

> While I prefer the centralized approach (and also consider your approach
> still a centralized one), but whatever works is fine with me.

Yes, it's also kind of centralized :-) However this tool does not necessarily have to be the only tool that can do this task. That's why I consider it the best (aka the least centralized) solution *I* can think of. 

Anyway, is there a similar problem in a different area that was already solved in Fedora somehow? 
-- 
Radek Holý 
Associate Software Engineer 
Software Management Team 
Red Hat Czech 
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