[CentOS] problems with yum_priorities on CentOS5/RHEL5

[Nick]

On 10/08/10 17:52, Keith Roberts wrote:
>> 1. yum check-updates and yum update do *not* warn you of an impending
>>    unresolved dependency caused by YP hiding the required package.
>>
>> It seems the only way to find out is if you go ahead and try and perform the
>> update, which potentially leaves you with one or more broken packages.
>> This seems a serious flaw that should be fixed.
> 
> Not necessarily so.
> I use '[root]# yum -y --skip-broken update' and this only 
> updates the packages that have no depsolving problems. Any 
> packages with problems are left out of the update.

Ok, but this isn't a solution, if the broken dependency is related to something
you care about.  It just the easiest possible resolution to implement.

>> 2. Not only do higher priority packages totally eclipse lower priorities,
>>    whatever version, but yum_priorities also makes it seem like they aren't
>>    even present.
> 
> Well you can enable all your repos with:
> 
> [root]# yum --enablerepo=* --disablerepo=Cmedia5 update (or 
> whatever the DVD media repo name is).
> 
> I have Centos 5.5, ATrpms, EPEL and remi repos all working 
> reasonably well using yum-priorities plugin.

I do wonder why the problem I've had isn't seen more often, as
perl-Module-Install (the package which requires the eclipsed package,
perl-Archive-Tar) is quite a common dependency of Perl packages.

However, whether this problem manifests itself would depend on what packages are
installed, not just which repositories are enabled.  Maybe you're just lucky (or
I'm unlucky), and don't need perl-Module-Install.

Cheers,

N