[Yum] Download restarting

[Michael Stenner]

On Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 12:27:04AM +1200, Bevan Weiss wrote:
> >These are two separate issues.  The first that you mention is yum
> >continuing after a file has failed to download.  This is not going to
> >happen, at least without some serious modification of package
> >policies.  Lets pick an extreme case where you do a yum update and
> >need a new XFree86, which depends on glibc.  Your glibc download
> >fails.  yum should not proceed to install XFree86.
> 
> I agree that yum should not proceed to install XFree86, however is there any
> reason why it shouldn't download it??  Or perhaps try a different repo for
> glibc?  (Not sure whether yum already does this).

Yes.  It already does try other repos.  As to whether it SHOULD do
something or not, it's a toss-up.  In some situations you might want
it to download everything so it will work faster when you find a
better repo.  In others you'd rather not waste your time downloading
50 packages when it's not going to install them anyway.  I don't see a
strong reason to favor one or the other.

> Yum already has an option of downloading without installing, so there must
> be some flag for whether installation takes place after downloading.  The
> level of this should just be changed so that it applies per file vs the
> current global application.

should?  perhaps you mean "could" :)

> This would become a more important issue for if multiple downloads where
> allowed at once, perhaps downloading from two separate repositories.
> Perhaps neither repo has much bandwidth and you could have multiple
> downloads going at once from the *nix machine... It would be preferable to
> have one connection to each repository... Then downloading all required
> files (as currently happens) and using the dependencies previously obtained
> begin installing the packages.  If there are still unsatified dependencies
> then the user could be prompted as to whether they should be attempted
> again.  If not then it (possibly) removes the installed packages, but leaves
> the uninstalled packages until the dependancies are fulfilled or the package
> becomes superceded.

There's partial support available for downloading multiple files
simultaneously, although this is a bit stalled at the moment.  There
are some subtle issues involved and it gets messy.  Basically, what
you're describing would be a significant amount of work and I think
it's just not going to be a high priority.  Now, if people are
volunteering to help, this conversation would go in a different
direction :)

> Thanks for the consideration,
> Good to hear that reget support is in the head :)

We aim to please :)

					-Michael
-- 
  Michael D. Stenner                            mstenner at ece.arizona.edu
  ECE Department, the University of Arizona                 520-626-1619
  1230 E. Speedway Blvd., Tucson, AZ 85721-0104                 ECE 524G