Fedora Users — Yum, the repo, and failed dependencies

Hi.

The last several months, I have seen a rising occurrence of faileddependencies when I try to install or update packages. Today, I wantedto install the package groups "Development Tools" and "DevelopmentLibraries", but of course, there were (again) failed dependencies, andthe package installation would abort.

I understand issues such as mirror discrepancies, and the tendency ofYum to only try the latest version of each package. It would be great tohave a way for Yum to try earlier versions of packages to satisfyavailable dependencies.

If I try to install package foo-1.1, which requires bar-1.1, but onlybar-1.0 is available (e.g. due to lagging mirror sync), wouldn't it bepossible for Yum to try with foo-1.0 instead? Is there maybe alreadysuch an option? As it is now, I'd have to track down all those packagesmanually, just because Yum insists on installing the latest version. Itshould be the default, but it should also try older versions if itcannot satisfy the dependencies of the latest version.

With updates, there is the skip-broken Yum plugin, but that won't helpwhen I have a specific package to install.


Regards
Ingemar