12:42 a.m.
Fedora is a feature rich Linux distribution containing the latest advancements
in open source software and I simply love Fedora.
Why does Fedora still decide to use yum? The package management system of
Fedora is still very primitive.
Here are my reasons why yum needs to go or needs *major* changes:
1) yum's interface (command line) is non-interactive. I always fail to
understand why it is
taking so long. "Setting up update process" stays for more than 1 minute at
times! (On a fairly fast PC with high speed internet connection). Atleast it
should show the user some progress as to what it is doing.
2) Quitting by CTRL-C isn't very easy. Is it?
3) On 64-bit machines, there *always* come up some issues with i686 packages
and protected multilib versions.
4) I have used Fedora for more than 5 years, I have faced "Unable to retreive
repository information repomd.xml" for like infinite times. Yes, the error
eventually gets resolved but it still comes again and again.
5) Need for autocomplete to work properly in package name argument of command
line when pressing TAB. It is painfully slow.
6) yum requires to download repository information separately for each user.
7) yum is strangely clubbed with package-cleanup,
yum-complete-transaction and I don't know what else.
These are my ramblings about yum. I know I could have filed a few of the above
as bugs and may be help to resolve them, But someone really needs to address
the bigger issue that is yum's design philosophy rather than just solve bugs in
yum.
Rather than providing me workarounds or solutions to make it work better,
Fedora needs to recognise that yum is really a huge pain to work with.
I will share one experience I had. Yesterday I did yum --enable-repo=updates
update on Fedora 16. It gave me an error stating protected multi-lib versions
of a dozen or so packages. Running package-cleanup --clean-dupes
removed 691 packages
leaving my system crippled. It removed the entire KDE and also network manager.
Now I unable to login to GNOME shell and not able to connect to any network. I
had to take backup using recovery mode before proceeding to reinstall.
I now need to reinstall my operating system. Reason : yum screwed up.
And these are the issues only regarding to the command line yum, The
GUI front-end to yum has more issues.
I do not intend to criticise any of the developers but only suggest
that yum *really* needs major changes.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks and Best Regards,
Elison
12:44 a.m.
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 12:12 PM, elison.niven(a)gmail.com
<elison.niven(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Fedora is a feature rich Linux distribution containing the latest
advancements
in open source software and I simply love Fedora.
Why does Fedora still decide to use yum? The package management system of
Fedora is still very primitive.
Here are my reasons why yum needs to go or needs *major* changes:
1) yum's interface (command line) is non-interactive. I always fail to
understand why it is
taking so long. "Setting up update process" stays for more than 1 minute at
times! (On a fairly fast PC with high speed internet connection). Atleast it
should show the user some progress as to what it is doing.
2) Quitting by CTRL-C isn't very easy. Is it?
3) On 64-bit machines, there *always* come up some issues with i686 packages
and protected multilib versions.
4) I have used Fedora for more than 5 years, I have faced "Unable to retreive
repository information repomd.xml" for like infinite times. Yes, the error
eventually gets resolved but it still comes again and again.
5) Need for autocomplete to work properly in package name argument of command
line when pressing TAB. It is painfully slow.
6) yum requires to download repository information separately for each user.
7) yum is strangely clubbed with package-cleanup,
yum-complete-transaction and I don't know what else.
These are my ramblings about yum. I know I could have filed a few of the above
as bugs and may be help to resolve them, But someone really needs to address
the bigger issue that is yum's design philosophy rather than just solve bugs in
yum.
Rather than providing me workarounds or solutions to make it work better,
Fedora needs to recognise that yum is really a huge pain to work with.
I will share one experience I had. Yesterday I did yum --enable-repo=updates
update on Fedora 16. It gave me an error stating protected multi-lib versions
of a dozen or so packages. Running package-cleanup --clean-dupes
removed 691 packages
leaving my system crippled. It removed the entire KDE and also network manager.
Now I unable to login to GNOME shell and not able to connect to any network. I
had to take backup using recovery mode before proceeding to reinstall.
I now need to reinstall my operating system. Reason : yum screwed up.
And these are the issues only regarding to the command line yum, The
GUI front-end to yum has more issues.
I do not intend to criticise any of the developers but only suggest
that yum *really* needs major changes.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks and Best Regards,
Elison
I forgot to add:
8) Yum cannot use an iso image as a repo without mounting it.
Yast in suse allows to directly use iso images as repos.
Thanks and Best Regards,
Elison
6:04 a.m.
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 1:44 AM, elison.niven(a)gmail.com:
I forgot to add:
8) Yum cannot use an iso image as a repo without mounting it.
Yast in suse allows to directly use iso images as repos.
You also forgot to add:
1) A proposed alternative
2) Patches to fix any of the issues you pointed out
3) Anything constructive at all in your ramblings.
Seriously, if you want yum replaced with something then you need to
show up with an
alternate proposal, how it would work, and people willing to do that
work. Without
those things, this is at best going to be ignored and at works just
turn into a huge "ME
TOO" thread that still winds up generating no change.
josh
6:13 a.m.
On 27/02/12 12:04, Josh Boyer wrote:
<snippedy snip>
You also forgot to add:
1) A proposed alternative
2) Patches to fix any of the issues you pointed out
3) Anything constructive at all in your ramblings.
+ quite a lot.
"Never whine about the darkness, bring a torch"
--
Regards,
Frank
"Jack of all, fubars"
11:50 a.m.
On 02/27/2012 07:04 AM, Josh Boyer wrote:
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 1:44 AM, elison.niven(a)gmail.com:
> I forgot to add: 8) Yum cannot use an iso image as a repo without
> mounting it. Yast in suse allows to directly use iso images as
> repos.
You also forgot to add:
1) A proposed alternative 2) Patches to fix any of the issues you
pointed out 3) Anything constructive at all in your ramblings.
Seriously, if you want yum replaced with something then you need to
show up with an alternate proposal, how it would work, and people
willing to do that work. Without those things, this is at best going
to be ignored and at works just turn into a huge "ME TOO" thread that
still winds up generating no change.
I love yum. I have been using it on dozens of systems for probably
something like 100 system-years. Normally it's rock-solid, but when it
breaks it is something to behold. I had a couple of failures over the
years, and it just so happens that the system I write this on has a
major problem when out of the blue yum just collapsed in a heap:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=796382
Things can happen---I am OK with that. What worries me more is that yum
became a little baroque and non-transparent. There is a litany of
remedies for yum problems:
yum-complete-transaction
rpm --rebuilddb
yum clean all
package-cleanup (--problems/orphans/dupes/leaves)
While I have a general understanding of how yum works, and one or more
of the above always got me out of trouble in the past, this time they
didn't help and I don't know what to do next: which tools to use, what
to look for. Yum-utils has 23 separate executables and 18 manpages that
list a bewildering variety of options and subcommands---intimidating
complexity, which may also be reflected in increasing yum run times for
routine actions like queries and updates.
Of course it's not reasonable to throw yum out and start from scratch.
Given that it almost always works very well, perhaps it's even
reasonable to conclude that it should be left alone. Even if we agree
that something should be done, which of the following ideas are worth
pursuing:
* better diagnostic tools
* more visibility into the yum data and internals
* some refactoring
* documentation for debugging problems
Re-reading what I wrote, I realize that it's not very constructive, as I
don't know what is the right thing to do to improve yum, much less how
to do it. I just want to raise the issues for discussion.
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4 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
elison.niven＠gmail.com -
Frank Murphy -
Josh Boyer -
Przemek Klosowski