[softwaremgmt] What is wrong with softwaremgmt in 11.0. ¿SVN status?

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Christian Morales Vega

22 Aug 2008 22 Aug '08

16:04

I'm going to try to list all the problems the current software management stack from openSUSE 11.0 has right now. All of them are because some parts ignore repository priorities and/or the "don't change vendor" rule. At http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-softwaremgmt/2008-07/msg00004.html and http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-softwaremgmt/2008-07/msg00005.html the problem was somehow discussed, but I don't know if there are plans to update the stack in 11.0, if the changes will be released only in 11.1 or if there are changes at all. Like discussed in the Jano Kupec threads "zyper lu" needs changes. The thing is it isn't a big problem since you can just ignore the fact that there exists a "lu" option... but there are derivated problem that are a lot more important. I don't know if they use the same code path, in which case a single fix would be needed or if a differtent patch for every problem is needed. 1- Installation of packages from YaST QT (and GTK?) software management module. VideoLAN repo provides libffmpeg0-0.4.9.13782-1.2 while Packman provides libffmpeg0-0.4.9svn-20080818.pm.0. I have Packman with a higher priority than VideoLAN. Now "zypper in libffmpeg0" will try to install the Packman version. That's correct. But if I try to install it through YaST... I left-click over the package, right click on it and select "Install". Everything correct, isn't? Well no because it has selected the VideoLAN version since "0.4.9.13782" is higher (somehow...) than "0.4.9svn-20080818". The worse thing is that I will not notice it if I don't manually go to the "Versions" tab. So *everytime* I install something from YaST I must go to the Versions tab to check the version selected is the one I want. 2- Update of packages through YaST QT (and GTK?) software management module. "zypper up -t package" will correctly update my system. But if I go to YaST and select Package->All Packages->Update if newer version available it will try to install newer versions even if they change vendor and/or are in repositories with a lower priority. A recurrent problem here is with multimedia. If you go to the forums you will see people complaining that after an update they can no longer see MPEG-4 ASP videos. They first install the Packman packages and all is good, since Packman has his own vendor string an update should never change to packages from openSUSE (that don't support patented codecs) or VideoLAN (that don't play nice mixed with Packman ones). But since the updater applet and YaST ignore the vendor string theirs systems end with a mix of multimedia packages from VideoLAN, Packman and openSUSE... and they must reinstall the Packman packages again. 3- KDE updater applet Exactly the same problem that '2'. 4- zypper dup It looks at vendor strings and doesn't changes between vendors, but it ignores repository priorities. Not a big problem right now, but I would like to have a fix for 11.0 before people starts updating to 11.1. So, are all of them just a single thing? A single fix in libzypp will make zypper, updater applet and YaST work correctly or I should open a different bug report for each of them? Is this fix already in SVN versions? There are plans of a fix for 11.0? In my opinion: - '1' isn't a big problem, can wait. - '3' (and perhaps '2') NEEDS a fix for 11.0. Isn't just an improvement, it's a bug. Right now the updater applet is totally unusable. I can ignore "zypper lu" and just use "zypper up", but with the applet I can't ignore the problem... "zypper lu" is the only option available. - '4' should be fixed for 11.0 before 11.1 is released. I'm worried about '2' and '3' since bug #402770 was closed with WONTFIX (and '1' is also similar). -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org

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Stanislav Visnovsky

2 Sep 2 Sep

07:43

Dňa Friday 22 August 2008 18:04:11 Christian Morales Vega ste napísal:

...

I'm going to try to list all the problems the current software management stack from openSUSE 11.0 has right now. All of them are because some parts ignore repository priorities and/or the "don't change vendor" rule. At http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-softwaremgmt/2008-07/msg00004.html and http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-softwaremgmt/2008-07/msg00005.html the problem was somehow discussed, but I don't know if there are plans to update the stack in 11.0, if the changes will be released only in 11.1 or if there are changes at all. Like discussed in the Jano Kupec threads "zyper lu" needs changes. The thing is it isn't a big problem since you can just ignore the fact that there exists a "lu" option... but there are derivated problem that are a lot more important. I don't know if they use the same code path, in which case a single fix would be needed or if a differtent patch for every problem is needed.

1- Installation of packages from YaST QT (and GTK?) software management module. VideoLAN repo provides libffmpeg0-0.4.9.13782-1.2 while Packman provides libffmpeg0-0.4.9svn-20080818.pm.0. I have Packman with a higher priority than VideoLAN. Now "zypper in libffmpeg0" will try to install the Packman version. That's correct. But if I try to install it through YaST... I left-click over the package, right click on it and select "Install". Everything correct, isn't? Well no because it has selected the VideoLAN version since "0.4.9.13782" is higher (somehow...) than "0.4.9svn-20080818". The worse thing is that I will not notice it if I don't manually go to the "Versions" tab. So *everytime* I install something from YaST I must go to the Versions tab to check the version selected is the one I want.

I assume libffmpeg0 is not installed on your system. In that case, the tools should behave consistently and I consider this to be a bug.

...

2- Update of packages through YaST QT (and GTK?) software management module. "zypper up -t package" will correctly update my system. But if I go to YaST and select Package->All Packages->Update if newer version available it will try to install newer versions even if they change vendor and/or are in repositories with a lower priority.

A recurrent problem here is with multimedia. If you go to the forums you will see people complaining that after an update they can no longer see MPEG-4 ASP videos. They first install the Packman packages and all is good, since Packman has his own vendor string an update should never change to packages from openSUSE (that don't support patented codecs) or VideoLAN (that don't play nice mixed with Packman ones). But since the updater applet and YaST ignore the vendor string theirs systems end with a mix of multimedia packages from VideoLAN, Packman and openSUSE... and they must reinstall the Packman packages again.

I'm not sure what to do about this. It is clear that you expect 'Update all packages in the list" and 'zypper up -t package' to behave the same, but in fact there is no indication that they are (and as Jano explained in the bug, they seems to use different algorithm to determine the result).

...

3- KDE updater applet Exactly the same problem that '2'.

The updater is calling zypper directly, so it should behave consistent with zypper.

...

4- zypper dup It looks at vendor strings and doesn't changes between vendors, but it ignores repository priorities. Not a big problem right now, but I would like to have a fix for 11.0 before people starts updating to 11.1.

Well, zypper dup is not a "official" way to upgrade from 11.0 to 11.1. You might be lucky, but that's it (but if it does not work, it is always interesting to hear about that, so we can try to fix the issue).

...

So, are all of them just a single thing? A single fix in libzypp will make zypper, updater applet and YaST work correctly or I should open a different bug report for each of them? Is this fix already in SVN versions? There are plans of a fix for 11.0?

In my opinion: - '1' isn't a big problem, can wait. - '3' (and perhaps '2') NEEDS a fix for 11.0. Isn't just an improvement, it's a bug. Right now the updater applet is totally unusable. I can ignore "zypper lu" and just use "zypper up", but with the applet I can't ignore the problem... "zypper lu" is the only option available. - '4' should be fixed for 11.0 before 11.1 is released.

I'm worried about '2' and '3' since bug #402770 was closed with WONTFIX (and '1' is also similar).

Not sure if we are able to address the issues, as they might be very deep in the stack and might result in unpredicable results. Stano -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org

Benji Weber

08:55

2008/9/2 Stanislav Visnovsky :

...

...
4- zypper dup It looks at vendor strings and doesn't changes between vendors, but it ignores repository priorities. Not a big problem right now, but I would like to have a fix for 11.0 before people starts updating to 11.1.

Well, zypper dup is not a "official" way to upgrade from 11.0 to 11.1. You might be lucky, but that's it (but if it does not work, it is always interesting to hear about that, so we can try to fix the issue).

I think this is a problem. I do not think that online upgrades need to be officially supported, but the lack of official support is always used as an excuse to not even attempt to get it to work every single release. People are put off from running openSUSE on servers by being told that it's not possible to upgrade between versions remotely even when it is, and they are put off when it requires expert knowledge to do it. It basically means that openSUSE is not an option to run on a server without physical access. All the other major distributions manage to provide working online upgrades, even if they are not recommended or supported, is openSUSE's package management so inferior? ;) -- Benjamin Weber -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org

Michael Schroeder

09:01

On Tue, Sep 02, 2008 at 09:55:31AM +0100, Benji Weber wrote:

...

server without physical access. All the other major distributions manage to provide working online upgrades, even if they are not recommended or supported, is openSUSE's package management so inferior? ;)

There are cases when it simply can't work (like when there is a major update of one of the libraries needed by rpm or some of the installed packages' uninstall scriptlets), so people are reluctant to say that it works. Even when it works in most of the cases, the official statement will always be "it's unsupported and untested. You're on your own." Cheers, Michael. -- Michael Schroeder mls@suse.de SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF Markus Rex, HRB 16746 AG Nuernberg main(_){while(_=~getchar())putchar(~_-1/(~(_|32)/13*2-11)*13);} -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org

Stanislav Visnovsky

09:03

Dňa Tuesday 02 September 2008 10:55:31 Benji Weber ste napísal:

...

2008/9/2 Stanislav Visnovsky :

...
...
4- zypper dup It looks at vendor strings and doesn't changes between vendors, but it ignores repository priorities. Not a big problem right now, but I would like to have a fix for 11.0 before people starts updating to 11.1.

Well, zypper dup is not a "official" way to upgrade from 11.0 to 11.1. You might be lucky, but that's it (but if it does not work, it is always interesting to hear about that, so we can try to fix the issue).

I think this is a problem. I do not think that online upgrades need to be officially supported, but the lack of official support is always used as an excuse to not even attempt to get it to work every single release.

From my perspective, if something is not officially supported, a user can expect just best effort to resolve the issue. For me, if upgrade by booting from DVD does not work, this has way higher priority than 'zypper dup' failing. IMO we have 'zypper dup' in the system available for the 2nd time now (10.3 -> 11.0, 11.0 -> 11.1). Let's see how following factory via zypper works for the hard core factory users and then we can reopen the discussion if we should recommend the process for all users.

...

People are put off from running openSUSE on servers by being told that it's not possible to upgrade between versions remotely even when it is, and they are put off when it requires expert knowledge to do it. It basically means that openSUSE is not an option to run on a server without physical access. All the other major distributions manage to provide working online upgrades, even if they are not recommended or supported, is openSUSE's package management so inferior? ;)

The problem is not in the stack, but in the system itself - see other comments on this on opensuse-factory. Every package has to be able to ugrade itself in a running system the way the system does not crash. Should we claim "we can do it" even if there is a large set of cases where this will fail? I'm not contradicting myself, I'm just less optimistic we will be able to workaround all problems. Stano -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org

Michael Andres

13:54

New subject: [softwaremgmt] What is wrong with softwaremgmt in 11.0. ?SVN status?

On Tue, Sep 02, Stanislav Visnovsky wrote:

...

D??a Friday 22 August 2008 18:04:11 Christian Morales Vega ste nap?al: [...]

...
In my opinion: - '1' isn't a big problem, can wait. - '3' (and perhaps '2') NEEDS a fix for 11.0. Isn't just an improvement, it's a bug. Right now the updater applet is totally unusable. I can ignore "zypper lu" and just use "zypper up", but with the applet I can't ignore the problem... "zypper lu" is the only option available. - '4' should be fixed for 11.0 before 11.1 is released.

I'm worried about '2' and '3' since bug #402770 was closed with WONTFIX (and '1' is also similar).

Not sure if we are able to address the issues, as they might be very deep in the stack and might result in unpredicable results.

They are quite deep in the stack. The basic problem is that zypper, yast-ui and yast-pkgbindings use three quite different ways to select packages. While zypper delegates as much as possible to the solver, yast-pkgbindings tried to do as much as possible on their own. And the yast-ui is somewhere in the middle. It's an unlucky situation that we have a powerfull solver, but some parts still drive it through an oldstyle interface. We already started to migrate the old code, to move decisions out of the applications and into libzypp and finaly into the satsolver. For 11.1 yast-pkgbindings are changed to use the libzypp Selectable interface, the same one the yast-ui uses. It's still not perfect, but the code is now located inside libzypp and so we have just one location to improve. And we just moved the 'distribution upgrade' from libzypp into the satsolver. Whith this 'zyppper dup' on 11.1 will respect all active solver policies, and not just some of them (as in 4). The required changes are quite radical so I don't know whether we will port this back to 11.0. But the issues are IMO valid and we must address them. -- cu, Michael Andres +------------------------------------------------------------------+ Key fingerprint = 2DFA 5D73 18B1 E7EF A862 27AC 3FB8 9E3A 27C6 B0E4 +------------------------------------------------------------------+ Michael Andres YaST Development ma@novell.com SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nuernberg) Maxfeldstrasse 5, D-90409 Nuernberg, Germany, ++49 (0)911 - 740 53-0 +------------------------------------------------------------------+ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org

Christian Morales Vega

21:55

New subject: [softwaremgmt] What is wrong with softwaremgmt in 11.0. ?SVN status?

2008/9/2 Michael Andres :

...

While zypper delegates as much as possible to the solver, yast-pkgbindings tried to do as much as possible on their own. And the yast-ui is somewhere in the middle. yast-pkgbindings == updater and yast-ui == sw_single module? Just guessing...

...

We already started to migrate the old code, to move decisions out of the applications and into libzypp and finaly into the satsolver.

For 11.1 yast-pkgbindings are changed to use the libzypp Selectable interface, the same one the yast-ui uses. It's still not perfect, but the code is now located inside libzypp and so we have just one location to improve.

And we just moved the 'distribution upgrade' from libzypp into the satsolver. Whith this 'zyppper dup' on 11.1 will respect all active solver policies, and not just some of them (as in 4).

The required changes are quite radical so I don't know whether we will port this back to 11.0. But the issues are IMO valid and we must address them. Good to know. Since the problem looks complex I can survive with the 11.0 stack now that I know it, I will update to 11.1 the day it is released anyway. I prefer resources to be put in a better 11.1 stack than in a backport.

What I really missed in 11.0 was something in the release notes. I started using ZYpp instead of Smart with 11.0, and being new to it I needed a lot of time (really!!) to fully understand why the updater applet was doing a thing, zypper up another and zypper dup something different. I would understand if in 11.1 there are still some rough edges, but an explanation in the release notes would be highly appreciated so they are not surprises. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org

Stanislav Visnovsky

3 Sep 3 Sep

07:52

New subject: [softwaremgmt] What is wrong with softwaremgmt in 11.0. ?SVN status?

Dňa Tuesday 02 September 2008 23:55:18 Christian Morales Vega ste napísal:

...

2008/9/2 Michael Andres :

...
While zypper delegates as much as possible to the solver, yast-pkgbindings tried to do as much as possible on their own. And the yast-ui is somewhere in the middle.

yast-pkgbindings == updater and yast-ui == sw_single module? Just guessing...

No. yast-pkgbindings ~ installation, other packaging tasks done by YaST modules (install single package, repository management, ...). yast-ui = special package selector widget which directly talks to libzypp for performance and maintainability reasons used in sw_single.

...

...
We already started to migrate the old code, to move decisions out of the applications and into libzypp and finaly into the satsolver.

For 11.1 yast-pkgbindings are changed to use the libzypp Selectable interface, the same one the yast-ui uses. It's still not perfect, but the code is now located inside libzypp and so we have just one location to improve.

And we just moved the 'distribution upgrade' from libzypp into the satsolver. Whith this 'zyppper dup' on 11.1 will respect all active solver policies, and not just some of them (as in 4).

The required changes are quite radical so I don't know whether we will port this back to 11.0. But the issues are IMO valid and we must address them.

Good to know. Since the problem looks complex I can survive with the 11.0 stack now that I know it, I will update to 11.1 the day it is released anyway. I prefer resources to be put in a better 11.1 stack than in a backport.

What I really missed in 11.0 was something in the release notes. I started using ZYpp instead of Smart with 11.0, and being new to it I needed a lot of time (really!!) to fully understand why the updater applet was doing a thing, zypper up another and zypper dup something different. I would understand if in 11.1 there are still some rough edges, but an explanation in the release notes would be highly appreciated so they are not surprises.

Thanks for the feedback. You basically have problem to start using openSUSE packagemanagement tools and concepts coming from smart user community. We are trying to lower the confusion, but seems we are still failing. Stano -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-softwaremgmt+help@opensuse.org

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Benji Weber
Christian Morales Vega
Michael Andres
Michael Schroeder
Stanislav Visnovsky