package dependencies in Bodhi

[Matthias Clasen]

On Thu, 2012-03-15 at 10:13 -0400, Kamil Paral wrote:
> We have found some problems in our AutoQA tests when updates proposed in Bodhi change while we're testing them. We discovered it using this extreme update example:
> 
> http://bit.ly/xxwTU6
> 
> It was modified roughly 20 times during 2 days. We tried to fix our tests, but some questions remain. I'd like to understand more of this Bodhi process and why it might be necessary to modify your update so much.

I've created that update. It is maybe not the best way to go about it,
but keeping the list of already-built packages in bodhi is one way of
keeping track of what is getting built.

There are several problems with the current way of doing multi-package
updates in bodhi. It starts with bodhi getting _really_ slow once your
update hits ~15 packages. 

And buildroot overrides are not tied into the update life-cycle at all,
so you end up with the situation where you build a bunch of things,
filing buildroot overrides for some involved libraries. Then you push
the entire thing out as an update, and you think you are done. But if
your buildroot overrides expire before your update has left
updates-testing, the buildroot silently becomes inconsistent with whats
already queued as updates...

But I didn't want to complain; if my way of doing 'big' updates is
causing problems for autoqa, I'm happy to listen to suggestions for
doing things differently.


Matthias