yum bug, or?

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Monday 29 March 2010 13:00:23 Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> On Monday 29 March 2010 08:34:58 Ed Greshko wrote:
> > A previous post prompted me to try removing various language groups via
> > yum.  I was surprised when this happened after doing yum groupremove
> > "Tajik Support"....
> 
> [snip complete openoffice suite]
> 
> 
> Well of course, Tajik Support is completely crucial for any core Linux
> functionality, didn't you know? :-D
> 
> Seriously, the culprit is here is dejavu-sans-fonts, it seems. From the yum
> dependency resolution,
> 
> --> Processing Dependency: dejavu-sans-fonts for package: 1:openoffice.org-
> core-3.1.1-19.28.fc12.x86_64
> 
> so anything openoffice* depends on it. However, the same package is listed
> under "mandatory" section in yum groupinfo "Tajik Support":
> 
> Group: Tajik Support
>  Mandatory Packages:
>    dejavu-sans-fonts
>  Default Packages:
>    dejavu-sans-mono-fonts
>    dejavu-serif-fonts
>  Conditional Packages:
>    kde-l10n-Tajik
> 
> I don't know what "mandatory" means in this context, but I guess when you
> try to remove the whole group, yum tries to remove the dejavu fonts as
> well, creating a cascade.
> 
> > This deserves a bugzilla....but I wonder what component would be best to
> > file it under.  Does anyone know for sure?
> 
> I would guess that the "Tajik Support" group is the culprit here, but I'm
> not sure this is actually a bug. While not being certain how the concept
> of a "group" actually works, my guess is that if you want to remove the
> *whole* group, it removes the *whole* group.
> 
> Maybe someone can explain how to remove the group without removing all of
> it's packages?
> 
> Actually, I've been wondering even before about this --- if I yum
> groupinstall some group, then remove some individual package which is a
> part of that group, does that mean that the group is still installed or
> not? It is unclear to me what criterion defines that a group is installed,
> since one can have only some of its packages installed. Fuzzy.
> 
> As a workaround, I guess yum groupremove "Tajik Support" followed by yum
> install openoffice* would not drag in the complete Tajik support again, but
> just the dejavu-sans-fonts package which is needed.

Ok, found it --- the man yum says:

<quote>
      grouplist
Is used to list the available groups from all yum repos. Groups are marked as 
"installed" if all mandatory packages are installed, or if a group doesn’t 
have  any  mandatory  packages  then  it  is  installed  if  any  of  the 
optional or default package are installed.
</quote>

So in this case, whenever you have the dejavu-sans-fonts installed, you 
automatically have "Tajik Support" group installed, by definition. And since 
openoffice depends on dejavu-sans-fonts, it really turns out that "Tajik 
Support" is a necessary dependency for openoffice.

Yeah, very funny... ;-)

Also, there is another relevant remark in man yum:

<quote>
       groupremove
Is used to remove all of the packages in a group, unlike "groupinstall" this 
will remove everything regardless of group_package_types. It is worth pointing 
out that packages can be in more than one group, so "groupinstall X Y" 
followed by "groupremove Y" does not do give you the same result as 
"groupinstall X".
</quote>

Illuminating, what can I say? Set theory in action... ;-)

Best, :-)
Marko