On Mon, 06 Sep 2004 20:04:06 +0100, Rui Miguel Seabra <rms@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > just set obsoletes=1 in the [main] section of your yum.conf > > Oh, I've already done that. I just think it should be the default. I disagree. I would suggest instead of obsoletes being on by default that if yum can detect an situation wher an obsolete operation could be performaed when a conflict is detected yum should inform the user in some way that activating obsoletes might be worth trying to resolve the conflict ,becuase one of the invovled packages in the conflict has non-empty obsolete tags. > Well, I thought there was a process for package submission, review and > what not. Of course accidents happen. But this is no excuse, or is a > "meta packager" like yum not better than plain rpm in itself? Whose to say all the possible obsoleting loop situations are accidents? > As far as I can see, I have to solve about as many problems as I did > without a metapackager (--obsoletes, --exclude=..., etc...). The job of > a meta packager is making things easier. Are you talking about your experience with development and test releases specifically, because if you are.. no tool is going to make insanity of the development tree...sane. Test releases eat babies... the development tree more so. Easier...for clearly logical situations. Package tools should not take action in ill-defined situations such as repository self-consistency problems where excludes are needed. It is arguable whether obsoletes as a class are ill-defined, circular and/or chains of obsoletes definitely are. > Anyway, loops are not that hard to find, just mark where you've been > previously (prolog 101) and handle apropriately (ie, until repo fixes > it, I can't do anything that touches foo, bar or baz, may I proceed with > the rest?). I do not see how this is helpful overall. Are you suggesting yum hide repository side problems from users by default? How is that helpful in resolving those repository side problems? The safe thing to do, by default, is when an error is encountered to inform the user of the error and quit so that the user can decide to take appropriate action. Automating a loop that actives excludes for conflicts or dependancy errors does nothing but help users ignore problems, instead of reporting them. -jef
