[CentOS] Yum curiosity: --obsoletes with update, useful or not?

Thu Apr 27 13:08:21 UTC 2006
William L. Maltby <BillsCentOS at triad.rr.com>

Got a wild hair this A.M. and decided to inundate my two brain cells.
"Man yum" includes this:

update If  run  without  any  packages,  update will update every
       currently installed package. ...
       assumed to be a shell glob and any matches are then installed.

       If the --obsoletes flag is present yum will include package
       obsoletes in its calculations - this  makes it better for distro-
       version changes, for example: upgrading from somelinux 8.0 to
       somelinux 9.

Hmmm. Cell number 2 doesn't forget much. I recall several admonitions
that major upgrade should take the form of a new install. E.g. CentOS 3*
to CentOS 4*. The paragraph above *seems* to indicate that a major
upgrade might be doable? Moreover, it prompts the questions:

1) "What are the downsides, if any?"
2) "Has anybody tried it recently?"
3) "Have any results to report?"

No pressing need, just curious.

TIA
-- 
Bill
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20060427/8ff804c5/attachment-0004.sig>