[Rpm-maint] Anybody using rpm solve database / --aid?

[Panu Matilainen]

On Thu, 20 Sep 2007, Jason Corley wrote:

>> Let me put it this way: there are far better tools to deal with
>> depsolving, arguments like these ain't going to save the solvedb. If you
>> want to save it, provide a real use-case (be it exceptional circumstances
>> or whatever) where the solvedb actually does the job better than a modern
>> depsolver of your choice.
>
> This is a very different track from your original question, which was:
>
>    "Anybody out there who would to miss the --aid option if it were gone?"
>
> You got two people who said "yes" but you obviously didn't like that
> answer.

The two "yes" answers so far have been noted. My liking or not has little 
to do with anything, I was just rather surprised to hear that people are 
actually using it for apparently "everyday depsolving" when better tools 
exist.

> Perhaps if you stopped beating around the bush and actually explicitly 
> stated your intent (which appears to be remove all features that yum 
> implements) you'd get more of the feedback you're looking for.

My original mail also had this: "Distros seem to be doing fine without 
shipping a solve database, but do people have local specialized uses for 
it?" I haven't really get an answer to that (the real use-cases). For the 
average use of installing and updating packages from a distro, --aid as 
currently implemented is fundamentally broken as it doesn't integrate with 
any of the update-mechanisms distros use, but instead relies on a separate 
metadata source, and an expensive & cumbersome one at that.

Yum is not a measure for removing features from rpm, things like "does 
this belong in the core package manager", "can something else do a better 
job" are.

 	- Panu -