[packman] Manual dependencies on ffmpeg: not good

[Jan Engelhardt]

On Tuesday 2012-06-19 21:56, Cristian Morales Vega wrote:
>>>
>>>> zypper does not want to update to ffmpeg-0.11[packman], because of
>>>> some whacky manual dependencies that someone had added. Drilled down
>>>> (minimal testcase), in rpm lingo,:
>>>
>>>make a "zypper dup", this should resolve.
>>
>> I do not consider that an ideal solution, because it replaces all
>> packages by random vendors, depending on which repositories are enabled.
>
>I agree with you in the general problem
>(http://lists.links2linux.de/pipermail/packman/2012-May/011142.html).
>But dist-upgrade behavior isn't random ->
>http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/
how-faq-forums/unreviewed-how-faq/
474523-software-management-dist-upgrade-way.html

Indeed the process is not "random", it was more a tongue-of-speek.

Using different prios for oss and pm is out of the question since
it would shift preference to one vendor, which is not what I want.

However, since I do not want "highest-version" either, using dup
in itself is off the table, since I prefer libgst*, even if it's
older from SUSE, but e.g. xine/etc. from pm, also even if it's
older.

I suppose there are vendor locks, but that would amount to a
management chore across multiple systems, so I just keep using
regular "zypper update" and make use of the implicit vendor
lock; anything specific is "zypper install"-forced.

That may also lock out downgrades, but such occus seldomly
anyway. It also locks out removals, but that generally does not
occur at all in a normal life, especially not with shlib packages.
It just was unfortunate that it however did in the ffmpeg case
due to the dependencies.