Package updating

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 12/15/05, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at redhat.com> wrote:
> One way to determine this is for someone to code this functionality and
> check out how long it actually takes ( not that I am volunteering). It
> does make it a bit more easier for testers to understand whats broken.

I think Panu might be the best person to ask as to whether or you can
have repodata tool ask this question without an egregious calculation
penalty.   Even if it can, I'd be inclined not to include that
information in the build reports, because its highly redudant
information.  One broken dependancy can cascade into dozens of
uninstallable packages... and thats makes for a very long build report
to sift through.

It might be worthwhile to be able to ask "will package foo install"
from a client side tool every once in a while. But I don't see much
value the question "which packages will not install" when the output
list is very long.  How exactly does one use a list of 30+
uninstallable packages.   The best question with regard to testers is
"what is the minimal set of --excludes that I need to use to avoid
install/update dependancy issues?" and I have no idea how one would go
about making a tool that outputs the answer to that.  If there was a
way to answer that without excessive calculation, it would be a
compact and useful expression to add to the rawhide build report.

-jef