rpm 5.x in Th

[Jeffrey Johnson]

On Sep 23, 2012, at 2:05 PM, Elan Ruusamäe wrote:

> 
> i'm sure people want just to get old package back, to revert human mistake of upgrading or some other reason for downgrade, because package is misbehaving, not wanting perfect rollback like filesystem rollback.
> 

RPM isn't responsible for human mistakes: no implementation can save users from mistakes:
	When the data is gone, you lose.
This applies to erased files, removed packages, and dead disk drives.

Packages don't misbehave, package monkeys make mistakes and distros
don't do sufficient QA so users are affected by the errors.

I'm not at all sure what people want, other than to complain.

> rolling back filesystem state really assumes nothing else happens in your filesystem than rpm packages. this is rarely true, there are logs, other writable data that you expect not to be "rolled back" if you just downgrade package.
> 

Yes. You do realize I designed a
	"Transactionally Protected Package Management"
to handle exactly and only package manager initiated operations?

There is zero detectable interest several years later, measured by any of discussion or patch
submission or attempts at using.

> call it something else than "rollback", if it hurts your perfect world
> 

Call its whatever you want, rpm has been able to repackage existing
content when erasing for most of this century. Users and distros are not
enabling the functionality, and the RFE's for better continue incessantly.

> i my world, where i deploy software with rpm packages, i do poldek -u package-old-version --downgrade as i do have old versions available in package manager repository. but distro packages are not available that easily, therefore people look into /var/spool/repackage dir
> 

So implement --rollback in poldek or yum or urpmi or apt or dpkg or smart or zypper
or BTRFS or even the linux kernel if you wish.

73 de Jeff