[CentOS] Why is yum not liked by some?

[Les Mikesell]

On Thu, 2005-09-08 at 16:24, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> > > 
> > >   What is it that you don't understand about
> > >   the "costs" of configuration management?
> > 
> > The part I don't understand is why the tool built for the
> > purpose doesn't do what everyone needs it to do.  Is that
> > simple enough?  Yes, I know I can build my own system.  I
> > know there are workarounds.  I'd rather not. 
> 
> Yum is not designed for configuration management ... unless you want to
> update to the latest releases in the repo.  In that case, it works
> perfectly.

What I want is to be able to update more than one machine and
expect them to have the same versions installed.  If that isn't
a very common requirement I'd be very surprised. 


> If you want to artificially place limits on the repo, (ie ... this is
> stable, this is not) ... then you have to create your own repo.
> 
> When we release an update, it is considered stable by RedHat.  Up you
> run up2date from RedHat, it will update you to the exact same versions
> that you get from CentOS.
> 
> I am not understanding what your issue with the repos or the tool is.

This isn't Centos-specific - I just rambled on from some other
mention of it and apologize for dwelling on it here.

There are 2 separate issues:
One is that yum doesn't know if a repository or mirror is consistent
or in the middle of an update with only part of a set of RPM's
that really need to be installed together.

The other is that if you update one machine and everything works,
you have no reason to expect the same results on the next
machine a few minutes later.

Both issues would be solved if there were some kind of tag mechanism
that could be applied by the repository updater after all files
are present and updates could be tied to earlier tags even if
the repository is continuously updated.
 
I realize that yum doesn't do what I want - but lots of people must
be having the same issues and either going to a lot of trouble to
deal with them or just taking their chances.

--
  Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com