[Yum-devel] Bleeding edge new feature

[James Antill]

On Tue, 2007-11-27 at 18:08 -0800, Leslie Satenstein wrote:
> I would like to see an option whereby I can defer updates of selected
> software that I choose by xx days. My idea is that for certain
> updates, I don't want to be first to receive them, ergo, I don't want
> to be on the bleeding edge.

 To add to what Seth has said, in the hope that others can find it, I
think most people who are asking for a feature like this need to really
think about what it is they really want.

 For instance Fedora already has an updates-testing repo. that almost
all updates go into before they go into updates, this means that there
is _already_ a delay from the "bleeding edge" ... so you are asking for
a _bigger delay_, for certain packages. Presumably the ones that break
most often for you, or cause you the most pain?
 But then why wouldn't all of Fedora's users want the same benefits? So
then the obvious solution is to the delay those packages in
updates-testing for longer, and yet (at least so far) from a package
maintainer point of view I don't see many comments in bodhi from people
who have tested in updates-testing.

> I thought that since we have a yum config file that has the exclude
> statement, that we could use the same parameter, only with an option. 

 This actually isn't that hard to do via. a yum plugin, look at
yum-security/yum-version-lock etc. and add a very simple "DB" (probably
via. zero length file timestamps in a /var/cache/yum/<foo>/first_seen/
dir).
 But again, if it "works well" people will use it and if lots of people
use it, I firmly believe you'll just eventually be back to where you are
now but with a bigger delay[1].


 So after all that negativity what do I suggest you can do that might
work long term?

1. Install things you don't care too much about, from updates-testing,
and report results into bodhi ... and encourage others to do the same.

2. Get a test machine/Xen-instance to test the things that cause you
pain ... and only install them after they work there.

3. Install yum-security and set it up to just install security updates
and/or specific BZ problems, most of the time.

4. Try something that isn't quite so "new" as the latest current Fedora,
like the previous Fedora (Fedora 7 is getting much fewer updates now
that Fedora 8 is out) or CentOS etc.


[1] Actually probably worse off than just enabling updates-testing, with
an exclude of some packages, because it'll be much more ad hoc.

-- 
James Antill <james.antill at redhat.com>
Red Hat
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