[ATrpms-users] Packaging standars (Was: lzo on RHEL3)

[Axel Thimm]

On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 04:44:49PM +0200, Thomas Moschny wrote:
> Axel Thimm wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 11:19:08AM +0200, Thomas Moschny wrote:
> > > One of the design issues is that these lib* packages will stay there and
> > > linger around in my system even when they are not needed anymore, until I
> > > remove them manually or with the help of yum's package-cleanup or
> > > whatever.
> > >
> > > The reason is that the existing infrastructure (librpm and it's frontends
> > > smart/yum/apt) doesn't differentiate between packages that were installed
> > > because user explicitly wished so, and those packages that were installed
> > > as a dependency. Doing so would require the frontends to maintain their
> > > own persistent knowledge about installed packages, as the rpm database
> > > doesn't contain that information.
> >
> > In fact it does, but I haven't delivered a robust implemenation yet.
> 
> No, it doesn't. Of course the rpm database contains dependency information, 
> but it doesn't record the reason why a package was installed. I might want to 
> keep a package installed, even when it is not required (in the rpm sense) 
> anymore. (Normally I won't, as I said, but there are exceptions. The library 
> might e.g. provide an optional and audio codec.)
> 
> > A poor man's implementation is (written down untested)
> >
> > for package in `rpm -q --whatprovides shared-library-package`; do rpm -e
> > $package 2>/dev/null; done
> 
> Where does 'shared-library-package' come from?

That's the part where I say "it does", and you say "it doesn't". :)
'shared-library-package' was designed for exactly what you want it for.

> > Something like this can be placed into cron and remove the packages
> > automatically.
> 
> This is not really something I'd like to have on a production system.

Care to detail?
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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