Comment # 6 on bug 1178389 from Stefan Hundhammer

The behaviour is intentional.

Having a retracted version of a package installed is pretty much a worst case
scenario, and things tend to go downhill from there: Manual interaction will be
required, and the user needs to have some knowledge which course of action is
best for his specific situation.

It is possible that the retracted version is actively harmful; then it should
carefully be replaced by a version that is not harmful.

However, it is also possible that the retracted version is only harmful or just
undesired in other cases that do not affect this user; in that case, it might
be a sound choice to simply keep the retracted version and wait until a newer,
improved version is released, which most likely will be automatically installed
with one of the next package updates.


Our role (the role of the YaST package selector) is a pretty passive one here:
We do our best to bring the problem to the user's attention, but it is the user
who needs to choose a course of action. We do not proactively attempt to change
the system; it is up to the user to choose that if so desired.

So, while the best non-retracted version is preselected in the versions tab,
the user still has to initiate updating to that version. In all likelihood that
will be a package downgrade with all the potential problems that might entail.

So, we don't try to be clever here and attempt to auto-fix the problem; we
might do more harm than good.


Verdict: This behaves as specified; this is not a bug, it is intentional.