collecting some of my previous submissions, i'm willing to generate some patches to the man page for yum to bring it up to date, but first, i just want to make sure that i have all the details down. the patches would be based on missing or unclear parts of the man page, so here's what i understand so far, feel free to correct me if i'm way off base. first, i found it useful to draw the distinction between packages for which you already have a version on your system, and those for which you don't. in normal RPM parlance, this would mean the difference between upgrading (an already-installed RPM) and installing (a new RPM). based on this, i chose to describe packages at a repository as either "new" or "newer", relative to your system, the difference being fairly obvious, right? i'm drawing this dictinction since there are a number of "yum" variations that work differently (and sometimes confusingly) based on whether you've already got an earlier version or not. the second general issue is how often "yum" has to consult the repositories. you'll see what i mean when this situation arises. and the third general issue is, when can you use, as an argument, a specific package name or glob pattern, and when can you not? there are times when this is confusingly inconsistent. Listing ------- there are a number of "yum list" variations, whose documentation in the man page doesn't seem to match their actual behaviour. first, there are three variations of listing what's "available" at a repository: $ yum list # what's either new or newer? $ yum list available # what's strictly new? $ yum list updates # what's strictly newer? (obviously, all of these require querying the repositories, so no complaints on that score.) now, for which of these can you add either specific package names or glob patterns? with the basic "list", you can add a packagename or glob pattern: $ yum list <package|glob> # works fine but this doesn't work with either of "list updates" or "list available". any reason why not? it would just make these variations work more consistently, no? and it would certainly be useful, yes? in addition, $ yum list installed queries all of the repositories, despite the fact that all you're asking for is a list of what's on your local host. (in this case, the "-C" behaviour would seem to make sense as the default.) in addition, it would be useful if the "list installed" variation also accepted package names or globs, as does "rpm -qa 'glob'". yes, i know you can pipe it to grep, but still ... :-) Installing/updating RPMs ------------------------- there is, it seems, some inconsistency in what you should be allowed to "install" and what you should be allowed to "update" -- should this depend on whether the package is either "new" or "newer"? if i try to "update" a package for which i don't even have a version on my system, yum will take the time to consult all of the repositories, only to give up afterwards with: # yum update ogle ... much repository consulting here ... Finding updated packages Downloading needed headers Cannot find any package matching ogle available to be updated. No actions to take based on this, i'm assuming that you can't technically "update" to a "new" RPM, but if so, yum could have saved me the time of consulting the repositories and deduced right away that this update was doomed to failure, no? so i can't (by default) "update" to a new RPM. however, apparently, i *can* "install" a newer RPM: # yum install vnc Downloading needed headers Resolving dependencies Dependencies resolved I will do the following: [update: vnc 4.0-0.beta4.3.2.i386] Is this ok [y/N]: note that, since i already have a version of vnc installed, at least yum is asking if i want to "update". fair enough, but if yum is going to be interactive here, then to be consistent, perhaps i should also be allowed to say that, yes, i want to "update" a non-installed RPM earlier. (based on the above, it's not clear what should happen if i choose to update or install using a glob pattern, for which i have only *some* of the available packages that match that glob already installed. thinking about that makes my head hurt.) Cleaning -------- last topic -- what does it mean to say # yum clean oldheaders From the man page, "Eliminate the old headers that yum no longer needs to determine the remote availablility of packages." sorry, i'm sure i'm being clueless, but what does this mean? rday
