Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 145747
exactarch is braindead
Last modified: 2014-01-21 17:51:14 EST
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041020 Firefox/0.10.1 Description of problem: I've read a lot of various posts about how "exactarch" is intended to only apply for updates, not installs, but this logic is really broken. I have an x86_64 system and I only really want the ia32 libraries that I *really need* to support some binary only apps. Problem is, when I go to install a new app for which a perfectly valid x86_64 version is available, yum tries to install loads of ia32 deps in order to install the ia32 version of the binary as well (which I don't want anyway). I understand the original intention of this flag but feel that it is ineffective for most user's needs (how many people really want 32 and 64 bit versions of *every* app installed?) Can you please push upstream to expand this option (or add another one) that actually applies to installs unless explicitaly (ie. "yum install foo.i386") asked for? Note: I'm classifying it as a bug rather than a feature enhancement because, from reading the manpages, it reads like exactarch should work as I describe. This is something that is going to drive new users crazy and *needs* to be fixed. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): yum-2.1.12-0.fc3 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.yum install (some new app) 2. 3. Actual Results: yum tries to install both i386 and x86_64 app and deps Expected Results: yum only tries to install the arch I choose (by yum config option) unless overridden with "yum install foo.<other arch>" Additional info: personal (not work related, despite the email), not that it should matter.
1. you'll find that you'll get a lot farther with bug reports if you're comments are less incendiary and more constructive. Calling something braindead isn't helpful it's just rude. 2. exactarch isn't considered during an install operation. what is considered is the best available arches for multilib arch trees. yum, when you do not specify the arch you want to install, will try to install the best possible arch for your system. On a singlelib arch this means the best arch for any set of arches available. On a multilib arch this means the same - but there are two sets of arches we look through. 32bit and 64bit. That's what is going on. So if you typed: yum install foo.x86_64 - then it would only install that specific arch. I've heard the argument for only installing the best of the multilib arches there, I'm just not sure that for consistencies-sake it makes sense. Feel free to make your argument more clearly and w/o pejoratives and I'll think about it.
My appologies if you think it was rude... I've heard the multilib arguement before and you'll notice that I explicitely address your point #2 and the workaround in my post. I'm not quite sure how installing two versions of an app and 10 libraries instead of the much more obvious 1 binary is more "consistent". I can see how some people might want the behaviour that currently exists now but it should be configureable. The default behaviour is simply not what a lot of people want (try sticking "exactarch install x86_64" into google and you'll get a couple pages worth of responses to support my assertion).
Not to push the point too much, but a very common issue where this becomes helpful is when you are trying to build from srpm or trying to install (via rpm) and it tells you you are missing a whole bunch of packages, without the arch appended. It is a real pain to go through and add ".x86_64" to all of them to prevent yum from trying to pull the i386 packages (and their deps) as well. One might argue that this is a problem in rpm/rpmbuild but I really do believe that this would be quite a useful option to some people who prefer to have an "as close to native" install on their machine (I wouldn't have any i386 packages if it weren't for the fact that openoffice still isn't 64 bit clean).
A return to this... again, sorry if I was rude before. I just think it would be a very useful option for people on multiarch systems to be able to say "only my primary arch unless specified otherwise". Various apps (rpm and rpmbuild come to mind, actually just about anything that isn't yum) give package names without the arch suffix which means cut-paste and edit a lot of stuff so that you don't install the world... would be good if you could make this a little easier (hell, I'll code it if you want but I would like your general nod before I go and brush up on python first).
so how would you test for it? if someone issues the command: yum install foo* how would you know whether they REALLY wanted foo.i386 and foo.x86_64 or if they just wanted foo*.x86_64? Show me how I check for it b/c the last thing I want to do is to ignore the specified arguments on the command line. and remember, wildcards are allowed in package specification for the command line.
The whole point was that you should get your default arch unless otherwise specified. If you really believe that x86_64 users want to install both 32 bit and 64 bit apps (which doesn't work btw, there may be /usr/lib and /usr/lib64 but there is only a single /usr/bin) then the "prefered arch" should be configureable rather than choosing a basically broken approach (install both, whichever installs first is broken and pulled in lots of libs that won't be used)
ok, not worth the trouble at this point, I'll just wrap yum and be done with it.