On Fri, 10 Feb 2006, Don Springall wrote: > Is anyone working on improvements to yum so a cron job can be scheduled to > update everything and not fail due to dependency errors ? If so what is the > time line for this feature ? "yum -y update" will run in a cron job unattended. As for dependancies... That depends on a whole bunch of things out of yum's (or any package manager's) control. If the repositories do not resolve for the set of packages you have installed, there will be a problem. (Especially if you are using test versions.) If you use more than just the standard repositories, you run a risk of things not resolving. (Especially if you have "alternate" versions of software installed or add-ons to software in the main repository, or a library that is in different repositories under different names.) For example: You have package A from main that depends on Library Z version 0.1.1. Package B from Fred's repository also depends on that library. Library Z gets updated to 0.1.2. Package A also gets updated to deal with that update. If package B does not get updated by Fred, Yum will not be able to resolve the dependancies. Also, if someone forgot to rebuild a dependacy in extras, you might see a problem. (Usually only happens in Rawhide, but sometimes people miss things.) Sometimes there are situations that yum should be able to resolve, but can't. If you have an x86_64 install, you can have multiple installs of a library with different architectures. If you try to update package A and it needs library Z updated, it will only update for the current architecture, not for all architectures for which library Z is installed. It does not effect a full upgrade, however. > Does anyone know if SUSE's smart package manager will resolve all dependency > problems and run as a cron job ? It will have the same problems as described above. Dependancy resolution is not magic. It cannot be resolved by the package manager if the packages are not built correctly or if there are missing pieces. It is like blaming your kid for being unable to complete a jigsaw puzzle when the pieces were never included in the box. If you stick with the standard repositories and a limited number of packages, you should not have a problem. You should always have an option to flag someone if there are errors for any automatic software update process. -- "George W. Bush -- Bringing back the Sixties one Nixon at a time." -- fedora-test-list mailing list fedora-test-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-test-list