On 16/01/2008, Timothy Murphy <gayleard@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Michael Schwendt wrote: > > >> > And explicit execution of "yum --enablerepo=..." for cherry-picking > >> > packages is only for people who know what they are doing. > >> > >> You mean you think it is better to permanently enable these repositories? > > > > Yes. Choose a set of repos and keep it enabled. > > I think Karl is living proof that this is not a good idea. Karl tries to switch between several disabled and still partially incompatible repos and fails. For example, as soon as the older x264 package from freshrpms upgrades the newer x264 package from livna due to how RPM version comparison works, that is a problem which Karl is not capable enough to solve himself. That's why he blames the repositories or Fedora instead of himself. Some package contents are fully incompatible, unfortunately. They disturb yum updates and also attempts at installing new software that requires them. It's a dead end for the majority of Fedora users. Recovery is needed, and as has been shown, "yum remove..." is not ready yet for the masses. The lame problems in these two recent threads is unrelated. They are a clear sign of inability to communicate via a mailing-list. And they show that Karl is not really interested in solving the problem. Instead of concentrating on analysing the problem together with the assistance of list subscribers, the threads are turnt into an irrelevant chat-like conversation. The details get buried. Every 50 messages it is repeated that after modifying some files and running an unknown number of commands the problem still occurs. Instead, it would be important to collect new data, post the complete session history (every "yum clean...", every "rm -rf ...", the latest "df" output), repost the full output of the last "yum install ..." installation attempt, too, and to do the same for every suggested command. Half-hearted trouble-shooting won't be successful. It's not that it's a hard problem, the person who has the problem is just not motivated. > It may possibly be a good idea for you, > but I certainly don't think it is a good idea > for the general Fedora user (amongst which I include myself). It's been several years since the first general Fedora users have run into issues when trying to mix packages from repositories with overlapping contents. Apt-pinning, Yum-priorities and SmartPM's downgrade strategies are attempts at working around such problems. Sure, you can be successful when cherry-picking single packages. Small ones, or built against Fedora base packages only. But if they pull in lots of requirements from the external repository, your dependency on that repository increases, and it becomes more likely that another repository causes conflicts of some sort. And normal yum updates might become a burden, since it has been encountered before that packages from different repos upgrade eachother.
