Bug 1502583

Summary:	dnf remove: distinction between "dependent packages" & "unused dependencies" is unclear
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan>
Component:	dnf	Assignee:	Jaroslav Mracek <jmracek>
Status:	CLOSED DUPLICATE	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	27	CC:	dmach, ignatenko, jmracek, mhatina, packaging-team-maint, rpm-software-management, vmukhame
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Last Closed:	2017-10-16 12:07:58 UTC	Type:	Bug
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Description Nick Coghlan 2017-10-16 09:37:05 UTC

Description of problem:

In the pre-removal transaction display, the distinction between the "Removing depended packages" and the "Removing unused dependencies" section is unclear

I thought the distinction was between "Packages that depend on packages being removed" and "Packages that were never explicitly installed and no longer have anything depending on them" but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

dnf-2.6.3-4.fc27.noarch

How reproducible:

Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Run "dnf install mc" in a clean F27 container image
2. Run "dnf remove mc" (say "No" at the prompt)
3. Run "dnf remove perl-interpreter" (say "No" at the prompt)


Actual results:

The pre-removal transaction display for the two removal commands is essentially identical, except for which package has been specified for removal.

Expected results:

"Depended packages" should be empty for "mc" (nothing depends on it) and list several modules (including "mc") for "perl-interpreter"

"Unused dependencies" should include all of mc's implicitly installed dependencies for the "mc" case, and list several modules (including "python2") for the "perl-interpreter" case


Additional info:

I don't know if this is a UX bug (i.e. the categories aren't really different or they mean something other than what I though they meant) or a functional bug (with unused dependencies being listed in the wrong section in the pre-removal transaction display).

Comment 1 Nick Coghlan 2017-10-16 10:26:48 UTC

I updated the issue title to match the clearer phrasing ("dependent packages") used in dnf 2.7.3 (the F27 container images have the older version by default).

Aside from the changed category title, dnf 2.7.3 behaves the same way 2.6.3 does: packages that I would expect to appear in the "unused dependencies" section appear in the "dependent packages" section instead.

Comment 2 Jaroslav Mracek 2017-10-16 12:07:58 UTC

I think that the problem will be fixed by pull-request https://github.com/rpm-software-management/libdnf/pull/325. But it waits till the new version of libsolv will be available. I can provide a copr repo with libsolv and libdnf including patches, but only on request. Please if the patch doesn't help don't hesitate to reopen the bug report.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 1486749 ***