[Rule-list] scripts for RPM dependencies analysis

[Martin Stricker]

Marco Fioretti wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 21:54:23 at 09:54:23PM +0200, Martin Stricker wrote:

> > No, but maybe peek into the anaconda source? It must be in there
> > (Python, but that can be rewritten).
> >
> I didn't think at all about this because I am not looking at how to
> resolve dependency problems during an install. I am trying to build
> something that looks at all the rpms available and answers by itself
> to questions like: Find among these 20 email clients, 15 browser, 12
> text editors, 20 news clients..... (all end user applications) the
> combination requiring the smallest number of RPMs and HD megabytes.

I'm sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you wanted just dependency
checking. Sorry, no easy solution for this that I know of.

> Another output I'd like from it is to say: you need to install this
> RPM, but only 50% of its files are actually needed by other packages,
> you can safely remove the rest.

While this can be very useful, there is danger in this direction. One
problem is updating RPMs, another (and possibly very serious!) one is
installing additional packages later - one of them might need one of the
deleted files. So the RPM database needs to be fixed, too. But then a
normal user (remember, one of our targets are schools and poor people!)
would ask "where do I find /usr/local/lib/foo.so?" and gets
"foo-1.0.0-i386.rpm", only to discover that it's already installed.

I'm not saying your idea is bad - on the contrary! But these traps
should be taken into consideration, and the user needs help in
circumventing them.

Best regards,
Martin Stricker
-- 
Homepage: http://www.martin-stricker.de/
Linux Migration Project: http://www.linux-migration.org/
Red Hat Linux 7.3 for low memory: http://www.rule-project.org/
Registered Linux user #210635: http://counter.li.org/

_______________________________________________
Rule Project HOME PAGE:  http://www.rule-project.org/rule/
Original Rule Development Site http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/rule/Rule-list at mail.freesoftware.fsf.org
http://mail.freesoftware.fsf.org/mailman/listinfo/rule-list