"Scott Lowrey" <slowrey@nextone.com> writes:
The rpm command on SuSE 9.1 and 9.3 provides a patch select option (-P, --patches). I have not had a chance to review rpm on OpenSUSE, yet but will be doing that soon, so apologies if this message appears to be a bit misdirected - it's not. :-)
Anyway, I'm guessing that a patch RPM is a "partial package" that does not contain all files, instead providing only the files that have been updated?
Correct, that's what we call a "patch RPM".
If I issue the "rpm -qPa" command, I see a small subset of RPMs - notably, those that appear to have been applied as part of an online update.
The Red Hat/Fedora/rpm.org guides and the master RPM change list do not document a -P option. Can someone give me some background? Is this a SuSE creation? What distinguishes a patch RPM from a regular RPM?
Yes, it's a SUSE local change. A patch RPM is really only a partial RPM, it can only be applied if the package is already installed.
I do know that any RPM can be considered a "patch" or "update", but I have a need to track RPMs that have been specifically applied in response to customer problem reports - this feature seems to meet that need.
Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, aj@suse.de, http://www.suse.de/~aj SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126