Fedora 30 Might Enable DNF's "Best" Mode By Default

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora 30 Might Enable DNF's "Best" Mode By Default

Under a late change proposal for Fedora 30, the DNF package manager's "best" mode might be enabled by default...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-30-Eyeing-DNF-Best

[Luke_Wolf]

This seems like an incredibly bad idea. I think OpenSUSE is the only distro that really has managing that right even if all the errors might seem scary. Having the concept of vendors and sticking to them is the only way to make having multiple repositories sane rather than ping-ponging between versions because repositories overlap.

[rockworldmi]

Wonder why they can't keep everything under one repo like NetBSD does with PKGsrc and packages .. No need for extra repos or codes for most things for eg. Just "sudo pkgin install vlc2" Installs vlc with Codecs while suse requires separate codec installs ..

[RahulSundaram]

This seems like an incredibly bad idea. I think OpenSUSE is the only distro that really has managing that right even if all the errors might seem scary. Having the concept of vendors and sticking to them is the only way to make having multiple repositories sane rather than ping-ponging between versions because repositories overlap.

This dnf option has nothing to do with multiple repositories whatsoever. It merely addresses the question of the default behaviour when there is a dependency breakage.

[HadrienG]

Wonder why they can't keep everything under one repo like NetBSD does with PKGsrc and packages .. No need for extra repos or codes for most things for eg. Just "sudo pkgin install vlc2" Installs vlc with Codecs while suse requires separate codec installs ..

For codecs, that's most likely a software patent issue.

[kpedersen]

For codecs, that's most likely a software patent issue.

They even do it for the free ones. Linux just likes to split things into tiny components (kinda akin to web development) which does sometimes get a bit annoying.

I actually prefer the *BSD way of things, including development libraries with the dependencies. No sdl2-devel package for example. It just comes with sdl2.

After all. Hard drive space is cheap. Time wasted due to broken dependencies isn't.

Personally I am under the idea that desktop environments like KDE should be a single package (like CDE) because no-one really uses their components separately such as Kate (too broken, or looks too out of place).

This would also make it feasible to have different major versions, KDE 3.5, KDE 4, KDE 5, etc.

[treba]

Sorry? Then how is the program gonna work if dependencies are unmet? Are you crazy?

It's about not silently ignoring a newer version but hard failing if a dependency is unmet. They won't just install packages without their dependency

[Shiba]

I'm confused, how can a package in their own repository have unmet dependencies?

[V1tol]

I'm confused, how can a package in their own repository have unmet dependencies?

For example, you added some 3rd party repository and it has a buggy package. Then DNF won't try installing latest version from this repo but fallback to latest compatible one. This problem is familiar to those who use Ubuntu and its PPA - when package is updated and is broken - whole apt install is broken.

[buzzrobot]

I'm confused, how can a package in their own repository have unmet dependencies?

There are thousands of packages in the repos of distributions like Fedora.

The potential for dependency issues is compounded by users adding repos that host packages distributions do not officially support. In Ubuntu, and often in its derivatives, this is a point-and-click excercise.