----- Original Message -----
From: "Hedayat Vatankhah" <hedayat.fwd(a)gmail.com>
To: "Development discussions related to Fedora"
<devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org>
Sent: Monday, January 5, 2015 7:50:27 PM
Subject: Re: Yet another frustration with Fedora package management
Radek Holy <rholy(a)redhat.com> wrote on Mon, 5 Jan 2015 03:03:30
-0500 (EST):
> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Hedayat Vatankhah"
<hedayat.fwd(a)gmail.com>
>
> > To: "Development discussions related to Fedora"
> > <devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org>
>
> > Sent: Saturday, January 3, 2015 9:42:01 PM
>
> > Subject: Yet another frustration with Fedora package management
>
> > Hi!
>
> > Summary: Try to prevent a package from being updated/installed from
> > repositories regardless of the package management tool you use. As it
> > seems,
> > then only way you can do this is to exclude it from the repositories
> > themselves inside their configuration file in /etc/yum.repos.d/, because
> > these are the only common settings between all three
> > (yum/dnf/PackageKit).
> > TBH, I'm not sure about PackageKit, but I feel that it don't read
> > /etc/dnf/dnf.conf as it doesn't use DNF but its backends. This is fine if
> > the package is in a single known repository, but what if it is in 3
> > repositories that you might not be aware of all of them?
>
> > More details:
>
> > As you might already know, nvidia drivers in RPMFusion F21 repositories
> > doesn't work for all nvidia cards. In one system, I finally installed
> > akmod-nvidia from RPMFusion F20 repositories which worked fine. Soon
> > after
> > I
> > realized that I should exclude akmod-nvidia and dependencies from F21
> > repositories. I added "exclude=*nvidia*" to /etc/yum.conf as I was
lazy
> > to
> > check which repository these packages come from. But then I noticed that
> > dnf
> > doesn't consider it excluded. Then I thought that probably PackageKit
> > doesn't use dnf.conf too. So, how should I excluded these packages? Well,
> > these were in rpmfusion-nonfree-updates repository, so I added the
> > exclude
> > directive there. Then I found that I should add it to rpmfusion-nonfree
> > repository too. However, since I use yum-plugin-local I also have a local
> > repository (I actually copied the repository from another system, so it
> > was
> > enabled on this system so that I could install software from it) which
> > also
> > included these packages. Therefore, I should exclude "*nvidia*" in 3
> > repository configuration files to make sure (hopefully!) that these will
> > not
> > be installed by any package manager I know.
>
> > Suggestion: Please add a single configuration file to
configure common
> > package manager options (Specially between DNF and PackageKit, which are
> > there to stay). As I mentioned in "F21 downloads repository metadata in 3
> > places!" thread, Fedora package management should be consistent and
> > integrated; and the current situation is really frustrating. If I want to
> > exclude some packages, I should be able to do it once for all. If I want
> > to
> > disable automatic download of metadata/packages, there should be a single
> > place where I can define my desired package management policy. If I want
> > to
> > specify default metadata_expire timeout for all repositories, there
> > should
> > be one place to do it. There really should be a single package management
> > policy that must be respected by every package manager in Fedora,
> > specially
> > the main ones: DNF and PackageKit (and currently Yum).
>
> Hi, I understand the frustration. On the other hand, I
personally hate
> anything that is centralized. Just an idea: what about a simple modular
> tool
> (maybe installed by default) which would be able to set options like this
> at
> all the places? Potentially it could be able to synchronize a subset of
> settings between given programs.
While I prefer the centralized approach (and also consider your
approach
still a centralized one), but whatever works is fine with me.
Yes, it's also kind of centralized :-) However this tool does not necessarily have to
be the only tool that can do this task. That's why I consider it the best (aka the
least centralized) solution *I* can think of.
Anyway, is there a similar problem in a different area that was already solved in Fedora
somehow?
--
Radek Holý
Associate Software Engineer
Software Management Team
Red Hat Czech