Re: Yum feature request

On Wed, 2008-03-19 at 23:27 -0300, Ivan Quirino wrote:
> When we Install a additional applications, lots of dependencies are
> installed too, like libraries and etc. But when we remove these
> applications the libraries used by the application remain and no other
> program uses that libraries or dependecies. I want to request a
> feature in yum in which it  checks for packages that are dependencies
> of a program, and remove these packages with the program, so we could
> save more disk space. This feature should remove only the packages
> that are dependencies for that olnly program that is being removed.

Ivan,
This feature request has been submitted in the past and one of the
problems follows.

If you install a package and it requires 5 other packages, but 2 of them
are already installed, yum installs the other 3 and the original
package.  Let's say you were using those other 2 packages for other
things although nothing in the RPM db says another package required
them.

Does yum remove all 5 packages when you remove the original?  It has no
way of knowing you were using the other two packages.  You might have
had a self-installed binary in /usr/local/bin that relies on those
packages, for example.

Because of this issue, I believe yum developers have rejected this
feature request in the past.

/Brian/

-- 
       Brian Long                             |       |
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