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

[nicolas vigier]

On Tue, 07 Aug 2012, Pascal Terjan wrote:

> 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 If a system is obsolete with the new distribution and known to break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...

Maybe we could change task-obsolete to conflict with obsolete packages
instead of obsoleting them :
- people who want to remove unsupported packages from their system
  install task-obsolete
- people who don't want to remove unsupported packages don't install
  task-obsolete

This will also make urpmi/rpmdrake warn before removing packages,
instead of silently removing them.