On Fri, May 07, 2010 at 02:45:06PM +0200, Joachim Schrod wrote:
I have always wondered what difference are between patches and "normal" software updates. It's probably not the bandwidth, as long as delta rpms are used, so I suspect it's more a kind of policy thing.
A patch is just some mechanism to force a minimal package version. It's like a package with a lot of conflicts. For example, the latest libesmtp patch "patch:libesmtp" more or less contains the equivalent of: Conflicts: libesmtp < 1.0.4-158.2.1 Conflicts: libesmtp-devel < 1.0.4-158.2.1 When you run 'zypper patch', you tell the solver to install the newest version of all patches. As patch:libesmtp contains the conflict, an installed "libesmpt" package with an old version can no longer be kept, thus the update is forced. So, 'zypper up' will install the latest versions if there are no problems. 'zypper patch' will force the update, maybe resulting in solver problems where the user has to choose some a solution. (This has nothing to do with deltarpms, 'zypper up' also uses deltarpms if possible. Deltarpms are just a way of reducing download size.) 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+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org