Bug 1208919 - RFE: When some of a list of packages to install can't be, the others should be.
Summary: RFE: When some of a list of packages to install can't be, the others should be.
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED DUPLICATE of bug 1197456
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: dnf
Version: rawhide
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Packaging Maintenance Team
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2015-04-03 23:16 UTC by Bruno Wolff III
Modified: 2015-04-07 14:09 UTC (History)
8 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2015-04-07 14:09:02 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


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Description Bruno Wolff III 2015-04-03 23:16:11 UTC
Description of problem:
I commonly used to use the following construct with yum:
yum install -y `cat putback`
where putback contained a list of packages to try to install. It would install all of the packages in the list that could be installed.
With dnf if any package can't be installed (commonly because of a soname conflict), no packages get installed. Nor is there any message indicating that some could be installed, but weren't.

Comment 1 Radek Holy 2015-04-07 09:08:58 UTC
Hello, thank you for the report.

Can you please explain on an example why would you be OK if the some of the packages will be installed and some of them won't?

Would the solution proposed in https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1197456#c17 work for you?

Comment 2 Bruno Wolff III 2015-04-07 12:27:30 UTC
Because it is a lot easier (and faster) to have dnf install as much as it can of the set, than to issue a separate dnf install command for each package. It is similar to the implied skip broken that dnf uses when updating, dnf should do as much as it can. If you don't think it should by default, then maybe the skip broken setting should be explicitly settable again.

And no, the solution in 1197456 isn't good as I would need to parse the output of dnf and run a modified command a second time to automate doing the excludes.

Comment 3 Bruno Wolff III 2015-04-07 12:38:41 UTC
This is arguably a duplicate of 1197456, but the bugs are filed against different releases.

Comment 4 Radek Holy 2015-04-07 12:49:17 UTC
Sorry, I still don't understand what is the benefit of installing some of the packages if some of them cannot be installed. If you could explain it on an example of some real packages, maybe it would be more easily understandable.

Comment 5 Bruno Wolff III 2015-04-07 13:04:13 UTC
Because you can't use packages if they aren't installed.

The list of packages to be installed are ones that I removed because they are blocking the upgrade of other packages or were dropped from rawhide. I want to reinstall these packages as soon as they are fixed. In effect I don't want one big transaction, but a separate one for each listed package. However the install attempts go a lot faster when I do them in a single command rather than running a separate command for each attempted reinstall. dnf is no longer faster than yum when I end up running hundreds of dnf commands instead of a single one like I can do with yum. (This isn't really rawhide specific, but soname bump issues are a lot more common there than in releases.)

Comment 6 Radek Holy 2015-04-07 13:37:07 UTC
OK, I hope I understand the use case now.

There is a list of packages. All of them should be installed at some moment in the future but some of the packages may not be available now so it's enough to install at least the rest of them now.

So, would it be acceptable for you if it would be supported via some switch? I'm asking because YUM apparently doesn't require a switch to do that but we intentionally differ here.

(It can be something like the --skip-broken switch, although I'd prefer different name, or maybe just something like --skip-unavailable switch...)

Comment 7 Radek Holy 2015-04-07 13:39:03 UTC
Oh, I forget that they might be available (but broken) to, so ignore the "--skip-unavailable" variant...

Comment 8 Bruno Wolff III 2015-04-07 13:52:51 UTC
Some might not be available, but more likely they aren't currently installable because of dependency issues. The ones that aren't available might be obsoleted. I don't want unavailable packages blocking other packages from being installed either, even though those will likely get removed from the list at some point.
The switch name might indicate best effort (short of removing or downgrading other packages).

Comment 9 Radek Holy 2015-04-07 14:09:02 UTC
So, I take it as a switch would be an acceptable solution for you.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 1197456 ***


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