Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 115549
RFE: rpm needs a full blown depsolver to select pkgs from args
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:10:36 EST
Description of problem: This has been discussed on the mailing list before: It would be really nice to be able to send rpm a long list of packages without checking if all of them are actually installable, and get it to ignore packages that are already present or have missing dependencies etc., and install the ones that may safely be installed. - instead of having the entire install fail in the situation where there are uninstallable packages. Similiarily for removals, it would be useful to be able to say rpm -e <long list of packages> and have (only) some of the packages removed, but others kept because they are required by installed rpms not included in the list. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 4.2-1
"rpm -U --aid" should install non existent packages with dependencies and ignore/upgrade already present packages. "rpm -e" already works as you suggest. You need to specify --nodeps for it to remove packages that are needed by other packages. If there is anything you want that is not covered by the above remarks then please let us know. Otherwise I would say NOTABUG.
No, I think --aid does something else entirely - I'm talking about selection between packages specified on the command line, not automatic dependency resolution. Also, as far as I can tell you are wrong about '-e'. Consider the following tests. In the first, I wanted rpm -U to install ogle-devel, and simply ignore ogle (which is installed already.) In the second, galeon (which isn't required by anything) should be removed, and kernel kept, if 'rpm -e' worked as implied above. In both cases, nothing is changed. # rpm -q ogle ogle-devel ogle-0.9.2-ogle1 package ogle-devel is not installed # rpm --Uvh ogle-0.9.2-ogle1.i686.rpm ogle-devel-0.9.2-ogle1.i686.rpm --aid Preparing... ########################################### [100%] package ogle-0.9.2-ogle1 is already installed # rpm -q ogle ogle-devel ogle-0.9.2-ogle1 package ogle-devel is not installed # rpm -e galeon kernel error: Failed dependencies: kernel >= 2.4.0 is needed by (installed) sndconfig-0.70-2 kernel = 2.4.20-8 is needed by (installed) kernel-module-alsa-0.9.3a-fr1_2.4.20_8 kernel > 2.2.0 is needed by (installed) NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-4363 kernel >= 2.4.20 is needed by (installed) iptables-1.2.8-13 kernel >= 2.2.0 is needed by (installed) libpcap-0.7.2-7.1 kernel >= 2.2 is needed by (installed) pciutils-2.1.10-8 kernel >= 2.2.14 is needed by (installed) nfs-utils-1.0.6-1 kernel >= 2.4 is needed by (installed) quota-3.06-11 kernel >= 2.2.9 is needed by (installed) rp-pppoe-3.5-8 kernel >= 2.2.0 is needed by (installed) tcpdump-3.7.2-7.1 kernel >= 2.0.36 is needed by (installed) shapecfg-2.2.12-14 kernel >= 2.2.16-21 is needed by (installed) sysstat-4.0.7-5 kernel >= 2.2.0 is needed by (installed) NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-4363_2.4.22_1.2115.nptl kernel-drm = 4.3.0 is needed by (installed) XFree86-4.3.0-42 # rpm -q galeon kernel galeon-1.2.7-3 kernel-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl
Retooling this bug as an RFE for a rpmlib dependency solver ...
Red Hat Linux 9 is no longer supported. Dependency solving in Fedora is provided by yum.
I'm not sure yum resolves dependencies in the way discussed here. It resolves them via "repository" setup, this is about installation via rpm files. Last time I checked, yum didn't support this mode of operation at all. Also this is not a specific to Red Hat 9 => reopening as Fedora Core 4 bug.
Oh, and the report is not originally about resolving deps. It's about ignoring packages that have unresolvable ones (on installation) or that would break dependencies (on removal). Not quite the same thing. And it's about ignoring already-installed packages, too, which is something else entirely.
yum supports installing from files. There are no plans at the current time to add the functionality you ask for.