On 18Apr2007 12:44, Mikkel L. Ellertson <mikkel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
| Antti J. Huhtala wrote:
| > [...] one of my (almost daily) updates of FC6
| > resulted in a conflict btw. two versions of some graphics program (I
| > forget which). Because this was hampering updates, I decided to 'yum
| > remove' the offending version.
| > Yes, yum gave me a long list of dependencies and asked if it was OK to
| > remove them as well. Whether I was tired or whatever, I didn't look at
| > the list closely enough, just gave my OK for the removal.
| > While this removal was in progress, I saw that files were deleted, files
| > that I couldn't or shouldn't lose at any cost. X server was one of them,
| > but it was too late then.
[...]
| > If this can happen to me, it can happen to almost anyone. I for one
| > wouldn't feel insulted if 'yum remove' asked me "Do you really want to
| > delete these important 'XYZ' files?" Please insult me all you want. In
| > fact, I think that M$ does this better, however else I despise most of
| > their policies and stupid user interface error messages.
[...]
| Would an "Are You Sure?" message have made any difference? My
| experience has been that they are no more effective then presenting
| the list of packages that have to be removed. They have been so
| overused in the past that people don't read them, they just click OK
| and go on. They can also be harmful when you get people counting on
| that type of message to protect them, and get burned when they do
| something that no one thought to protect them from.
[...]
I am also of this opinion.
However, I thunk yum (or rpm, underneath) could do with a notion of
sticky/"don't remove this package", which would cause an Error with "yum
remove" instead of an "are you sure", and require a "--remove-sticky"
to actually do. The idea being that:
normally you'd never try to remove such packages,
and never trip over it
you could tune it via some control file
It would include things like bash, the kernel, the X-server, xfs, xterm and
basic fonts if installed, glibc and various other extremely core things. (Why
xterm? Because it's the stanard emulator that is always there - I'm seeking
that stickiness leaves you a usable system, not a "pretty" system.)
On the same topic, the flip side of removing too much is installing too
much. Building a "stripped down" server off Fedora or RHEL is a PITA
because various systems are prerequisites lots of "high level" tools.
For example, a rack mount server often has NO use for cups, and I
usually want to toss it. But if I do that various system-* tools go too,
and many GUI things, because they all _require_ cups.
There are numerous similar examples, some far more egrarious. I had a
classic the other day, but is escapes me just now.
What is needed is a "recommended" dependency, and a switch to control
whether it means install, ignore or warn. And probably default to warn.
So I'd go:
yum remove cups
and it would do it, but not prune various control-panel type tools that
offer printer control, for example, but emit a warning.
Cheers,
--
Cameron Simpson <cs@xxxxxxxxxx> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/
War doesn't prove who's right, only who's left. - BDD Games' Fortune
