[Mageia-dev] Task-obsolete and non-sense obsoletes

[Pascal Terjan]

On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 12:31 PM, Olivier Thauvin
<nanardon at nanardon.zarb.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Many people already complain about it, but for me task-obsolete must
> die.

I don't think so, but people should not be allowed to add random
obsoletes there.

> First I just remove but urpmi claim it must come back on my system...
> probably because it claim to replace lib64db5.2, even maybe still need
> it.
>
> Secondly it contains non-sense dependencies:
> Obsoletes: lib64db5.2 < 5.2.42-3
>
> Any lib64db5.2 over this version will by definition obsoletes any
> packages having same name.
> So this mean anyone can keep the lib64db5.2 as soon the release tag
> is increased or someone push into mga 2 / update any libdb higher
> than 5.2.42 (5.2.43 for example).
>
> Moreover, any package lacking of requirements during an upgrade is
> removed by urpmi.
>
> I no-one complain, I'll do a major cleanup (eg removing everything at
> least everything starting by lib) in package this week
>
> But I am still in favor to remove it. In past, package we didn't want to
> support anymore was just removed from mirrors, and this was enough to
> show their status.

But people will not be notified of it.
If a system is obsolete with the new distribution and known to break
things/contain major security problems, I think having a place to put
the obsoletes is good.
But really I wouldn't expect more than 2 or 3 such packages in a release...